ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about five key postulates. First, owing to post-Cold War dynamics, globalized supply chains, and attendant ideational shifts, mass-level preferences for redistribution have shed their one-time militancy in Southeast Asia. Second, redistributive pressures as emanate from the dynamic, while in an earlier era delivering such radical force as to unify elites, more readily divide elites today, or reactivate latent fractiousness. Third, where transacted in a democratic setting, elites who resort to strategies of populist mobilization forge a trans-class coalition, hence threatening in varying measure the 'inviolable' interests of 'establishment' elites, now thrown into reactive relief. Next, establishment elites may embrace the urban middle class in a 'counter' trans-class coalition. Finally, the contemporary forms of class affiliation upon which populist mobilization depends can be partially impeded by contingent features such as rural bossism, economic stagnancy, or leadership foibles, or more substantially blocked by ethnic identification.
