Political Clientelism: Key points
Introduction
• Political clientelism describes the distribution of
selective benefits to individuals or clearly defined
groups in exchange for political support.
• On the one hand, it appears to be associated with
premodern social contexts and is therefore
connotated with cultural and economic
‘backwardness’.
• On the other hand clientelistic dynamics are also
found in US through different ‘lobby groups’ and
‘special interest politics’.
Clientelism
• Clientelism is a form of personal, dyadic exchange usually
characterized by a sense of obligation, and often also by
an unequal balance of power between those involved.
• This definition reflects the origins of the concept as a
descriptor of hierarchical patron-client relationships in
traditional rural societies.
• In other words, clientelism is a way of describing the
pattern of unequal, hierarchical exchange characteristic of
feudal society, in which patrons and clients were tied to
durable relationships by a powerful sense of obligation
and duty
• Socioeconomic modernization brought greater
geographical mobility and urbanization, higher
levels of education, the replacement of
agrarian by industrial employment, and the
decline of traditional rural elites.
• These developments weakened traditional
patron-client ties, which made way for new
forms of exchange.
• Organized political parties, with relatively
bureaucratized structures, replaced landlords
and local notables as patrons
• This new clientelism shares some of the features of the old.
The relationship is still instrumental, and the benefits
provided to clients are still largely private and excludable. But
there are also important differences.
• First, the relationship is less hierarchical, more ‘democratic’.
There remains an imbalance of power, in that the patron has
control over resources that the client needs, but there is less
of a sense of deference and dependency on the part of the
client, who feels increasingly free to use her vote as a
commodity to be exchanged for whatever maximizes her
utility.
• Second, as a result of this less hierarchical and personalized
context, the new clientelism is more conducive to fluidity and
change in electoral behaviour, opening up possibilities of
greater competition and elite turnover.
• The old clientelism is very much a form of
social and political exchange, in that it
‘involves the principle that one person does
another a favor, and while there is a general
expectation of some future return, its exact
nature is definitely not stipulated in advance’ ;
• The new clientelism instead resembles
‘economic’ or ‘market’ exchange in which the
client seeks to maximize utility irrespective of
any sense of obligation towards or
identification with another actor
Important point
• The most clientelistic types of exchange
involve a stable patron-client relationship in
which excludable goods are exchanged. The
less durable and more conditional the
relationship, and the less individualized the
benefits involved, the less clientelistic the
nature of the exchange
• The new clientelism is closely associated with the
expansion of the economic and social role of the state.
• In traditional contexts, the state often has a more
limited role, particularly in regard to its expenditure.
• As the state’s role has expanded in much of the world
to involve a detailed regulation of economic activity
and the provision of a wide range of financial benefits
(welfare and pensions, industrial and agricultural
subsidies, public housing) and public services
(education, health), the parties governing the state
have had a greater ability to manipulate and channel
these resources in exchange for political support.
• The growth in the role of the state has also led to a vast
expansion in state personnel, which in many cases has
been exploited by political parties to give jobs to their
activists and supporters: example- scams in recruitment
ensure that some candidates are obliged to a political
party;
• Issue voting is the most distant pattern of electoral
exchange from ‘pure’ clientelism. Voters offer support
to candidates in terms of their policy preferences, but
lacking any ideological identification, are less likely to
build any kind of emotional ties to the patron party or
candidate, and programmatic changes can easily
undermine the exchange, which is just as symbolic as
class voting, but lacking its emotional charge
CRITIQUE
• Amongst populist theories of democracy, perhaps the
clearest critique of clientelism could come from the
position of participationist theories.
• Participationist theories which emphasize process over
outcome value the opportunities elections provide for
personal development through political involvement,
whilst outcome-oriented participationist theories value
the way in which electoral campaigning and mobilization
provide opportunities for citizens to communicate their
preferences to political leaders, and in developing public-
spiritedness
• From a broader populist position, clientelism is
criticized because it gives primacy to the
distribution of individual, selective benefits to
citizens, to the detriment of the provision of
collective goods. This is a big problem for
collectivist notions of popular sovereignty.
• Corrupt party financing subverts citizen
inequality by allowing the wealthy to buy political
favours which redistribute furtheradvantage to
them. Clientelism often allocates benefits to the
least privileged, and since these clients often
have little more than their vote to trade.