This chapter concentrates on major themes in the literature on party politics in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, the Philippines and Thailand. It differentiates between parties and party systems according to their rootedness in social milieus on the one hand and the predominance of clientelistic networks on the other hand. It also identifies certain commonalities of party politics in these countries: a weakness of party organisation; the absence of a political left; a flawed party financing; and floating institutional orders. It concludes with a view on existing gaps in the literature, particularly referring to a lack of comparative analysis and of research grounded in the cutting-edge literature on party politics.
