Dynastic democracy: political families in Thailand

election outcome in favour of candidates who have every intention of abusing their position if successful. With these thoughts in mind, it is easy to see why legislating against ‘vote buying’ has superficial appeal to politicians – especially corrupt politicians in no way threatened by an unenforceable law. The important point to note, however, is that the underlying problem is endemic corruption, not gift-giving per se, which, in principle at least, may actually reflect high-minded intentions. Making ‘vote buying’ illegal simply allows the political class to appear to care about eradicating corruption, while contributing little if anything towards achieving that objective. The author notes that some analysts have advocated the provision of public funding to allow ‘clean’ candidates to compete on more equal terms with those minded to recoup the cost of getting elected using corruptly generated future income. The logical flaw here is that the cost of an election campaign is not fixed. Each campaigner would have to be given the same amount, and if all campaigners find an extra, say, $10,000 in their bank account, it can be assumed that all those with a reasonable prospect of success will increase their campaign spending by about that amount. There is no obvious reason to assume this extra spending will generate more votes for ‘clean’ candidates, so this policy seems incapable of achieving the desired result. In summary, this book will be useful to those with a general interest in election campaigning in Indonesia and other countries characterized by endemic corruption, but its analytical contribution is compromised by Kramer’s perception of ‘vote buying’ as a cause of corruption rather than a consequence. The experienced and accomplished candidate, Bontor, seeing no conflict between anticorruptionism and ‘vote buying’ – or, rather, gift-giving – seems to this reviewer to have the more commonsense view of this issue.