ABSTRACT
This chapter presents three questions: what is the relationship between rent-seeking and money politics? What drives rent-seeking and money politics? How do these drivers affect the contestation for, and allocation of, rents? To answer these questions it examines the meaning of, and relationship between, rent-seeking and money politics, and how both are manifested in Malaysia. The chapter reviews the dominant discourses on rent-seeking and money politics in Malaysia, which centre on ethnicity, cronyism and political business. Both rent-seeking and money politics broadly involve the use of money to influence political decisions. Rent-seeking generally refers to business seeking to secure the state allocation of economic rents through legal or illegal means. The political patronage approach expands on ethnic politics by examining the influence of political factors on rent allocation and identifying the main beneficiaries of ethnic redistributive rents through cronyism and money politics. Money politics is associated with political capture, which forms the starting point of the analysis.
