Chapter 6 focuses on macro-particularism – the hijacking of programmatic policies. It highlights the difficulty of drawing a clear line between programmatic and patronage politics. It explains three forms of macro-particularism: credit-claiming (when a politician claims their individual intervention was critical to delivering a benefit to an individual or group); facilitation (when the politician actually does intervene to ensure delivery); and morselization (when the politicians breaks a program into bite-sized chunks and allocates them according to political criteria). The chapter explains that the three case-study countries present different mixes of these forms. Hijacking under Malaysia’s party-dominated system lacks incentives to allow morselization and so hijacking mostly involves credit-claiming and facilitation of benefits provided by the dominant party. The deeply entrenched local machines of the Philippines represent a system founded on discretion, hence, more morselization. Indonesia is mixed: some politicians, notably regional executives, enjoy discretion in allocating resources; legislators are still trying to expand access to state resources for hijacking.

This chapter analyses variation in patronage politics at the subnational level in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Variation is apparent at two extremes: locales where politicians rely more intensely on patronage, often combining it with coercion; and “islands of exception,” generally urban areas, where programmatic appeals supplement or begin to supplant patronage. Explaining this variation, the chapter focuses on three variables: concentration of control over economic resources, levels of capacity of local state institutions, and relative autonomy and egalitarianism of local social networks. The mix of these three factors can provide politicians and citizens with options to escape the cycle of patronage politics, or may deepen citizens’ dependence on patronage and vulnerability to predatory politicians. These variables help explain subnational variation, including intense patronage relative to the rest of the country (e.g., in East Malaysia and Indonesian Papua), high coercion (e.g., in the Philippines’ Mindanao), and urban reform movements that push toward programmatic politics (e.g., in Penang in Malaysia, Surabaya in Indonesia, and Naga City in the Philippines).

This chapter examines Indonesian unions’ involvement in mayoral, district head, and gubernatorial races in our five field sites between 2005 and 2018. It explains how unions negotiated with candidates to secure political contracts, oral and written, promising patronage benefits and prolabor policies in return for votes. As the chapter shows, the content of these political contracts varied, as did the process through which they were reached. In some cases, they were little different from agreements struck with myriad community leaders who encouraged members of their communities to vote for the candidate in return for money or public goods like a new road. In others, the focus was firmly programmatic, emphasizing measures like better enforcement of labor regulations; more regular factory inspections; and affordable healthcare, housing, and transport. There were also enormous differences in the extent to which unions and candidates delivered on these contracts. But, even where they failed, they had the effect of raising the profile of labor issues as political issues and of unions as political actors—so much so that some unions decided to run candidates of their own.