ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a set of cases in Southeast Asia from the perspective of oligarchs and oligarchy. It should be noted at the outset that an emphasis on the power and influence of small groups at the top of a social formation does not deny the power of other actors, nor imply that social mobilization is pointless or that electoral democracy is a sham. It is, rather, a recognition that certain extreme concentrations of minority power in society can exist under a variety of regimes ranging from authoritarian to democratic. Oligarchic power in advanced industrial contexts, for instance, is almost universally fused to procedural democracy. Although it is impossible to focus on all the cases in the region of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore have been selected for the ways in which they help develop oligarchic theory and for how the theory helps illuminate important aspects of the cases. We begin with a brief discussion of oligarchs and oligarchy, since the terms are widely used but also highly muddled conceptually.1
