In his book, Erik Kuhonta advances an institutional theory of equitable development. He argues that an institutionalized party helps to promote social and human development by privileging public over private interests and by promoting programmatic politics rather than clientelistic exchange. A party is fully institutionalized when it is autonomous, coherent, and organizationally complex, but is rooted in society in a way that enables it to address the needs of the poor (pp. 23–24). To test his argument, Kuhonta draws on evidence from two sets of paired comparisons. The primary comparison is of Malaysia and Thailand, and in a separate chapter, he extends the argument by comparing the Philippines and Vietnam.

The Institutional Imperative makes a number of important contributions to the development studies literature and the field of comparative politics more broadly. Kuhonta does a fantastic job of outlining the political history of an understudied region and tying that history to the important debates in development studies. He points to a fundamental difference between the politics of economic policy and social policy. Whereas successful economic reforms depend on a technocratic, autonomous bureaucracy, the successful implementation of social policy requires a degree of social embeddedness that only political parties can provide. Moreover, Kuhonta makes it clear that the social rootedness of political parties that yields good social policy is not reserved for democracies. In the Southeast Asian story, the dominant parties in hybrid and authoritarian regimes have been more successful at achieving full institutionalization than parties formed in democracies.

In the following, I discuss three issues related to the book: 1) the way the study may impact the discussion of regime type and how it relates to equitable development; 2) questions the book raises about the role of ethnicity in social policy; and 3) a few thoughts related to the study's methodology.

Concerning regime type, Kuhonta expands on institutional theories that explain social development in democratic countries with a strong left movement or democracy (p. 24). Two of his country cases (Thailand and the Philippines) enjoy periods of democracy, and two (Malaysia and Vietnam) remain hybrid or authoritarian regimes for the period of the study. One of Kuhonta's most startling findings is that the democracies fail at promoting social development, whereas the illiberal regimes succeed. This leads him to suggest that the explanation for equitable development “pivots on institutions, not on democracy or authoritarianism” (p. 13). Social mobilization and social rootedness of institutions matter for social development outcomes, yet authoritarian regimes are better at rooting their institutions in society in the Southeast Asian context.

This finding raises an important question: Are successful social and human developments unrelated to regime type? More provocatively, are nondemocracies better at promoting equitable development than democracies? The answer to these questions may lie in the role of ideology and social mobilization in facilitating social development. In explaining the success of Malaysia and Vietnam in implementing social policy, Kuhonta argues that both a pro-poor but pragmatic ideology and high levels of social mobilization are necessary for the successful implementation of social policy. Another possibility is that the importance of ideology and social mobilization for good social policy is conditioned by regime type.

In this regard, it is important to note the insights contained in Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen's comparison of social policy in India and China (India: Development and Participation, 1996, Chapter 4). In China, socialist ideology was the key reason for the Communist Party's heavy emphasis on education and health care in rural areas prior to its economic takeoff in the 1980s. In contrast, India by and large failed to promote social and human development, and clientelistic parties appropriated public goods for private gain. But this failure was not uniform across all of India. Rather, there is substantial variation in the degree of social development that correlates with levels of social mobilization across Indian states. Thus, Drèze and Sen suggest two pathways to successful social development. One, for authoritarian and hybrid regimes, involves a pro-poor ideology that compels political elites to utilize the coercive levers of the state and party apparatus to redistribute wealth. The other, for democratic regimes, involves a highly mobilized and class-conscious society forcing policymakers to be more responsive to the needs of the poor.

Applying this logic to Kuhonta's cases, we might partially rethink the reasons that social policy in Thailand and the Philippines lagged behind that of Malaysia and Vietnam. Throughout the book, the author views social protest as an indication of the failure of political institutions and a liability for democratic regimes. If political parties were coherent and effective, demands would be channeled through institutions rather than voiced by dissidents on the street. Students of social movements would disagree with this characterization; the ability to assemble and present demands in public forums is an inherent and necessary part of any democracy. At the same time, Kuhonta is right in pointing to the absence of institutions as an important explanatory factor. If Thailand and the Philippines had stable, mature democratic institutions in place, the demands made on the street might better translate into effective social policy. Similarly, if we were to account for the degree and depth of democracy in a broader sample, we might likely find a positive relationship between democracy and social development.

Kuhonta rules out Malaysia's ethnic structure as an alternative explanation for the success of its social policy. He notes that the success of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) is due to its size and degree of institutionalization. Because the UMNO was a large political party that was socially rooted in many parts of the country, it could unite the population and the bureaucracy behind its social policies. Thus, it is the structure and size of the party rather than social bonds among Malays that explains the UMNO's effectiveness at promoting equitable growth.

This argument raises the question of whether the size and structure of the UMNO is at all related to the ethnic structure of Malaysia's society. If it is, then we cannot rule out ethnicity as an explanatory factor—the second issue I wish to discuss. Kuhonta points to the colonial experience as the main reason that Malaysia had a broad-based party system (p 124). The UMNO emerged as a coherent and complex organization out of anticolonial movements. However, many countries that experienced colonialism did not emerge from that experience with a fully unified nationalist party. India's party system, for example, became progressively more fragmented in the decades following independence.

Previous studies of public goods provisioning show that smaller parties find it expedient to provide club goods (patronage), whereas parties with a large support base find clientelist strategies too expensive to maintain. (See Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival, 2000; and Pradeep Chhibber and Irfan Nooruddin, “Do Party Systems Count? The Number of Parties and Government Performance in the Indian State,” Comparative Political Studies 37 [March 2004]: 152–87.) The larger a party becomes, the more likely it is to provide broadly accessible goods and services directly to voters instead of providing club goods to political elites, because doing so is a more efficient way of winning votes when the minimum winning coalition is large. If ethnicity helps to structure the party system in Malaysia, then the minimum winning coalition is large because each ethnic group constitutes a large percentage of the selectorate. This structure would provide Malaysian politicians with greater incentive to provide public goods than politicians in highly fragmented societies, or entirely homogenous societies where ethnicity is not a basis for political organization.

As to methodology, there are two primary issues that need to be considered in assessing the generalizability of Kuhonta's central argument. The first relates to his research design. Kuhonta uses two sets of strategically paired country comparisons to test his arguments about the relevance of institutions for equitable development. One problem that he faces in using a paired comparison approach is that he wants to test the relevance of a number of independent variables related to institutionalization, but all of them vary across the two cases. For example, Malaysia and Vietnam have parties with a pragmatic ideology, organizational complexity and social rootedness while Thailand and the Philippines do not. Thus, it is difficult to glean which of the component elements of institutionalization is doing the work. A separate problem with the paired comparisons is that each set of countries varies in a number of ways, aside from the key independent variables, that could potentially affect the outcome of interest. The ethnic structure, colonial history, international relations, and geography of these cases are different, making it difficult to isolate the effects of institutional factors.

A second methodological issue relates to measurement of the dependent variable. What policy and economic outcomes are most relevant to equitable development and how can we compare these outcomes across cases? Kuhonta frames his question in terms of differing trends in inequality and poverty across his cases; but the real test of his theory is in the intervening variables—the differing policy commitments of governments that result in higher or lower levels of poverty and inequality. Here, there is some unevenness in measurement across the cases. For example, it is argued that Thailand's land policy was less successful than Malaysia's; but Thailand's land policy attempted wholesale land reform, whereas Malaysia's focused on settling virgin forest areas. Health care is important in both Malaysia and Thailand, but it is not entirely clear which country was more successful in its implementation, or how public commitments changed over time. It might be useful to analyze a simpler, more universal measure, such as social spending as a percentage of GDP, to compare commitments across countries over time.