characteristics of patron-client relationships may exist between higher and lower-level politicians, or between politicians and a handful of immediate supporters, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Relations between politicians and their subordinate political campaigners, canvassers or vote brokers ( hua khanaen- literally, 'bosses of patron-clientage. Some analysts of contemporary Thai provincial politics still fail to make this distinction between relations of political patronage and patron-clientage (for example, Nopparat 1993; Robertson : 929).