Bonding, Bridging, & Bypassing

“A major breakthrough in the scientific understanding of ethnic politics in emerging democracies. The secret sauce is the focus on candidates' appeals to the voters during election campaigns and the systematic and replicable use of data photographed from thousands of posters combined with local newspaper reports and hundreds of rich interviews. The result is a brilliant analysis of Indonesia today that will inform future research in many other countries.” - R. William Liddle, Ohio State University “Ethnic politics in Indonesia defies easy classification. Based on immersive field research and an impressive range of original data, Bonding, Bridging, and Bypassing brings clarity to the logic of ethnic politics in one of the world's most diverse democracies. Rather than treating ethnic appeals as inevitable, Colm A. Fox shows how institutional rules and ethnic demography interact, explaining why, when, and how politicians use ethnic appeals. The result is a novel, compelling, and comprehensive account of the politics of identity, with implications for ethnic politics in diverse democracies around the world.” - Tom Pepinsky, Cornell University “[This book] tackles one of the core questions in comparative politics—what are the consequences of ethnic diversity for democratic politics—from the perspective of a candidate for office. Combining wholly original data, the book provides a convincing account of how electoral rules, group size, and party characteristics shape candidate’s decision on whether to appeal to their own ethnic group (bonding) or mobilize across groups (bridging). The book should be on the shelf of any comparativist interest in ethnic politics, political institutions, or comparative electoral politics.” ALLEN HICKEN, University of Michigan “[This book] is at once a decisive contribution to theorizing on ethnic politics, and a landmark analysis of how ethnic politics works in one of the world’s multi-ethnic giants, Indonesia. Drawing on a stunning array of sources, it provides us with new ways to study ethnic politics, and a new toolbox for understanding how, why, and when politicians draw on ethnic appeals to win elections.” EDWARD ASPINALL, Australian National University