The literature on politician-voter linkages generally argues that politicians tend to mobilise poor voters through clientelistic benefits, while middle class voters are mobilised through programmatic policy pledges: politicians are unlikely to develop programmatic platforms addressing the needs of the poor because middle class voters – having a much better capacity to sanction politicians – will punish any politician who promises radical social change. However, as this paper shows, the liberal anti-corruption discourse provides politicians with a programmatic platform that can mobilise both middle class and poor voters. Moreover, the paper argues that campaigning on liberal anti-corruption policies can have a negative impact on the consolidation of democracy, as it promises to achieve a fictional separation between the private and the public. This argument runs counter to the general assumption in the politician-voter linkage literature that programmatic linkages are more conducive to the deepening of new democratic regimes than clientelistic linkages. To develop these arguments the paper studies electoral dynamics in the new democracies of Southeast Asia, where politicians campaigning on anti-corruption platforms have been very successful in recent elections.
