Political Clientelism DossierPrepared for the November 5–6, 2010 Conference on

“Political Clientelism, Social Policy, and the Quality of Democracy:Evidence from Latin America, Lessons from Other Regions”

Organized by Grupo FARO and The International Forum for Democratic Studies

Global/Multiregional1. Scott W. Desposato, “How Does Vote Buying Shape the Legislative Arena?,” in

Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying , ed. Frederic Charles Schaffer (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 101–122.

2. Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Beyond Clientelism: Incumbent State Capture and State Formation,” Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 4–5 (April 2008), pp. 638–673.

3. Paul D. Hutchcroft, “The Politics of Privilege: Assessing the Impact of Rents, Corruption, and Clientelism on Third World Development,” Political Studies 45, no. 3 (1997), pp. 649–658.

4. Phillip Keefer and Razvan Vlaicu, “Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism,” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 24, no. 2 (April 2008), pp. 371–406.

5. Philip Keefer, “Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 4 (October 2007), pp. 804–821.

6. Mushtaq H. Khan, “Markets, States, and Democracy: Patron-Client Networks and the Case for Democracy in Developing Countries,” Democratization 12, no. 5 (December 2005), pp. 704–724.

7. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson, “Citizen-Politician Linkages: An Introduction,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 1–49.

8. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson, “A Research Agenda for the Study of Citizen-Politician Linkages and Democratic Accountability” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 322–343.

9. Luigi Manzetti and Carole J. Wilson, “Why Do Corrupt Governments Maintain Public Support?” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 8 (August 2007), pp. 949– 970.

10. Simeon Nichter, “Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 1 (February 2008), pp. 19–31.

11. Frederic Charles Schaffer, “Lessons Learned,” in Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying , ed. Frederic Charles Schaffer (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 183–200.

Africa12. Michael Bratton, “Formal versus Informal Institutions in Africa,” Journal of

Democracy 18, no. 3 (July 2007), pp. 96–110. 13. Staffan I. Lindberg and Minion K.C. Morrison, “Are African Voters Really

Ethnic or Clientelistic? Survey Evidence From Ghana,” Political Science Quarterly 123, no. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 95–122.

14. Pedro C. Vicente and Leonard Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Vote Buying: Lessons From Field Experiments in African Elections,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 25, no. 2 (Summer 2009), pp. 292–305.

15. Nicolas van de Walle, “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? The Evolution of Political Clientelism in Africa,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 50–67.

16. Nicolas van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems,” Journal of Modern African Studies 41, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 297–321.

Asia

17. Anirudh Krishna, “Politics in the Middle: Mediating Relationships between the Citizens and the State in Rural North India,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 141–158.

18. Bruce Kam-Kwan Kwong, “Patron-Client Politics in Hong Kong: A Case Study of the 2002 and 2005 Chief Executive Elections,” Journal of Contemporary China 16, no. 52 (August 2007), pp. 389–415.

19. Emmanuel Teitelbaum and Tariqu Thachil, “Party Fragmentation and the Emergence of Programmatic Spending in the Indian States,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failures,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

20. Steven I. Wilkinson, “Explaining Changing Patterns of Party-Voter Linkages in India,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 110–140.

Latin America

21. Javier Auyero, “The Logic of Clientelism in Argentina: An Ethnographic Account,” Latin American Research Review 35, no. 3 (2000), pp. 55–81.

22. Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno, and Susan C. Stokes, “Vote Buying In Argentina,” Latin American Research Review 39, no. 2 (2004), pp. 66–88.

23. Ernesto Calvo and Maria Victoria Murillo, “Who Delivers? Partisan Clients in the Argentine Electoral Market,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4 (October 2004), pp. 742–757.

24. Daniel J. Epstein, “Clientelism versus Ideology: Problems of Party Development in Brazil,” Party Politics 15, no. 3 (May 2009), pp. 335–355.

25. Jonathan Fox, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico,” World Politics 46, no. 2 (January 1994), pp. 151–84.

26. Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos, Chad Kiewiet de Jone, Carlos Melendez, Javier Osorio, and David W. Nickerson, “Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias: Experimental Evidence from Nicaragua,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods, & Political Market Failure,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

27. Susan C. Stokes, “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 315–325.

28. Mariela Szwarcberg, “Who Monitors? Clientelism and Democratic Representation in Argentine Municipalities,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failures,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

29. Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, “Choosing Clientelism: Political Competition, Poverty, and Social Welfare Policy in Argentina,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failure,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

Middle East

30. Ellen Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (July 2009), pp. 122–135.

Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia

31. Klarita Gërxhani and Arthur Schram, “Clientelism and Polarized Voting: Empirical Evidence,” Public Choice 141, no. 3–4 (December 2009), pp. 305–317.

32. Henry E. Hale, “Correlates of Clientelism: Political Economy, Politicized Ethnicity, and Post-Communist Transition,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition , ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 227–250.

Global/Multiregional

1. Scott W. Desposato, “How Does Vote Buying Shape the Legislative Arena?,” in Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying, ed. Frederic Charles Schaffer (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 101–122.

Legislators’ use of private or public goods to win elections impacts their behavior

once in office. Although all legislators face the dual challenges of providing goods and

claiming credit, the difficulty of each challenge varies with the nature of the goods.

Private goods, such as cash and food, are concrete and immediate. Politicians can easily

demonstrate that they have provided these goods, but they must exert effort to quickly

obtain and deliver them by allying with the forces that control patronage. By contrast,

public goods like environmental protection and reduced corruption are more valuable but

less immediate. Politicians can easily deliver these goods, but they can only claim credit

for their individual role in the policymaking process by forming disciplined parties and

developing voting records. Legislators’ behavior reflects the challenges they face: in the

heavily clientelistic Brazilian state of Piauí, legislators cross party lines to build alliances

with the governor and acquiesce to his agenda in exchange for patronage. In the more

programmatic state of Brasilia, legislators develop voting records and use party

allegiance to signal their legislative accomplishments and ambitions. Although legislators

may pursue varying tactics in other institutional settings, programmatic and clientelistic

electoral markets are likely to cause different kinds of legislative behavior across

institutional contexts.

Clientelistic and programmatic goods appeal differently to voters and require

different behavior from legislators. Clientelistic private goods tend to be lower in value,

but they are appealing because they are immediate and certain: for voters averse to risk

and delay, a guaranteed small cash payment now may be preferable to a possible large

income subsidy in the future. Legislators in electoral markets that value private goods

face an urgent pressure to obtain and distribute goods immediately. By contrast,

legislators in electoral markets that value public goods face less urgent pressure to deliver

because “delayed delivery is offset” (pg. 106) by the greater value of the goods.

However, legislators can easily claim credit for providing small, immediate goods: if a

voter receives food, cash, or medicine, the legislator has fulfilled his promise. Claiming

credit for public goods produced through a complex legislative process is far more

difficult. Because “a single legislator usually won’t be able to balance the budget,

increase educational spending, or lower taxes in a single term” (pg. 107), voters cannot

easily assess whether any progress is being made in important policy areas and whether

their local legislators are responsible. Legislators in public goods markets must spend the

preponderance of their effort claiming credit, while legislators in private goods markets

must spend the preponderance of theirs delivering goods.

The ways in which legislators claim credit and deliver goods depends on the political

context. In Brazilian state legislatures, two characteristics are particularly salient in

shaping legislative behavior: Brazilian states have independently elected governors who

control state finances, and Brazilian parties have few financial resources and little

disciplinary control over their members. Legislators in private goods electoral markets

have few incentives to develop their voting records or maintain disciplined parties.

Instead, they will attempt to obtain state resources by allying themselves with the

governor and acquiescing to his policy agenda. The governor will attract cohesive

support from his party, but he will also attract defectors or force opposition parties to

support his initiatives. By contrast, legislators in public goods electoral markets can claim

credit for policies by developing established voting records and forming cohesive parties.

Membership in an ideologically coherent party “provides a brand name” (pg. 108) that

succinctly and credibly communicates members’ policy goals and accomplishments and

helps like-minded legislators coordinate policy initiatives. Opposition and government

parties both have incentives for cohesion. In Brazil, public goods electoral markets will

lead to more cohesive opposition parties and more developed voting records.

One of the sharpest political contrasts in Brazil is between the states of Piauí and

Brasilia. Although the two states have virtually identical formal institutions, they have

very different electoral markets. Piauí is Brazil’s least developed state, and political

competition is almost exclusively centered on private goods: deputies win votes by

providing goods like medical care, transportation, and sometimes cash. In Brasilia, the

most developed state in the country, constituents are interested in candidates’ policy

platforms and are less influenced by personalistic benefits. Legislators in Brasilia do

more to claim credit and less to obtain patronage resources than their peers in Piauí. First,

they use recorded “roll call” votes to demonstrate their policy positions and legislative

behavior to voters: between 1991 and 1998, there were 7,971 roll call votes in Brasilia

and only 20 in Piauí. In Piauí, most opposition lawmakers indicated a preference for

private “negotiation” over public votes, and some were unaware that they could demand a

roll call vote. Second, legislators in Brasilia rely on parties and less on the governor to

win elections. The recorded voting records from the two provinces reveal very different

patterns of party cohesion. In Brasilia, the opposition and governing parties had

moderately high, statistically indistinguishable levels of cohesion, while in Piauí, the

governing party had a level of cohesion that was nearly twice as high as the opposition’s.

Even when the opposition in Piauí had a majority of legislative seats, party leaders

needed to negotiate with the governor over access to state resources or face defections

within their ranks. Because distribution was more important than credit claiming, the

governor—with his control of patronage resources—replaced parties as the nexus of

political organization.

In other political settings, the pressures of clientelistic and programmatic vote

markets may translate into different legislative outcomes. In Brazil, an electoral market

that favors private goods leads to weak parties, because legislators abandon their party

leadership to win patronage from the governor. In Argentina and Mexico, an electoral

market that favors private goods has strengthened parties. Because the Peronists in

Argentina and the PRI in the Mexico have extensive financial resources, clientelistic

politicians need to ally with party leaders to provide private goods. Formal institutions

are not irrelevant—they just depend on underlying assumptions about voters. Voters who

are exclusively ideological make different demands on legislators than voters who are

only concerned with private goods. Even an assumption that voters don’t matter

influences the impact of formal rules on legislative behavior. But just as formal rules

cannot be viewed in isolation, neither can the contours of the electoral marketplace be

viewed as an isolated phenomenon. Electoral markets have “ripple effects” (pg. 120) that

reach far beyond election day and into the processes and outcomes of legislatures

throughout the world.

2. Anna Grzymala-Busse, “Beyond Clientelism: Incumbent State Capture and State Formation,” Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 4–5 (April 2008), pp. 638–673.

Political elites often attempt to capture the state for their own benefit—they extract

resources from the government for their own personal or political gain. According to

Anna Grzymala-Busse, elites must make two key decisions when pursuing state capture:

whether to share these resources with supporters and whether to permit competition

between elites for resources. These two decisions yield four distinctive classes of

extractive regimes that powerfully influence state institutions and policies. Elites decide

whether to pursue clientelism, predation, party-state fusion, or competitive exploitation

based on preexisting political and socioeconomic conditions, including wealth, stability,

and institutional legacy. In turn, the mechanism of state capture exerts a powerful

influence on the shape of the state and affects property rights, accountability, state

employment, development programs, and electoral rules.

Assuming that rulers seek to maximize their own benefits, they face tactical choices

about their relationships with other elites and with the masses. They may develop a

relationship with followers by sharing captured state resources, which diminishes rulers’

own personal gains but decreases threats to their rule. They may also develop a

relationship with other elites by permitting competition for leadership, which increases

the probability that rulers will lose power but decreases the penalties they face following

removal. Democrats voted out of office have a secure and lucrative future and the

prospect of reelection, while dictators overthrown by rivals are often arrested, exiled, or

killed. The combination of decisions that rulers make determines the state capture regime

they pursue: clientelism, exploitation, fusion, or predation. Clientelism is seen in Latin

America, Japan, and Italy, where politicians both permit competition and distribute to

followers, trading targetable goods for electoral support. Predation, by contrast, was seen

in the Phillipines under Ferdinand Marcos, Nigeria under General Sani Abacha, and

Indonesia under Mohamed Suharto and involves neither competition nor distribution.

Instead it allows authoritarian elites to steal state resources for themselves. Party-state

fusion, such as in Singapore and Eastern Europe under communist rule, involves the use

of monopolistic political parties that distribute goods to supporters while suppressing

potential competitors. Finally, institutional exploitation, frequently seen in post-

communist Europe, involves competition without distribution. The classes of state

capture are ideal types, and in reality they often overlap. For example, an exploitative

regime might use clientelism to buy off key constituencies, or a party-state might allow

clientelistic elections at a local level.

Rulers choosing between tactics for state capture are guided by a complex set of

structural constraints including “existing organizational endowments, the costs of buying

support, and the trade-off between costs and probability of exit from office” (pg. 645). As

such, rulers’ choices on rent-sharing are influenced by two factors. First, poverty and

inequality make rent-sharing appealing because poor voters will trade their support for

smaller material benefits and are less mobile and therefore easier to monitor, and because

the demand for public goods and property rights is weaker without a strong capitalist

class. Second, when politics are highly unstable and parties lack strong ties to

constituents, the costs of developing political institutions to distribute rents and monitor

loyalty are prohibitive. Similar factors affect rulers’ choice to allow competition, as the

organization of society, the viability of repression, and the international community

influence whether the cost and probability of losing power are high enough to rationalize

institutionalized competition and protection for losers. Competition and clientelism also

interact: rent-sharing can serve as a buffer against negative public sentiment and inhibit

competition, because it raises the costs of opposition and facilitates the mobilization of

supporters, while competition can inhibit rent-seeking since some voters are likely to

oppose the practice. Neither wealth nor political history can explain regime type in a

simplistic manner: clientelism is found in both low income and high income countries

across colonial, democratic, and authoritarian backgrounds. The constraints that shape

state capture are subtle and multifaceted.

Contrary to some scholars, Grzymala-Busse does not believe that rent-seeking leads

to universally weaker institutions. Although it may weaken some institutions, it can also

strengthen others. The strategic decisions elites make, based on their political and

socioeconomic environments, bear directly on the state institutions they build: specific

needs, such as distribution and contestation, require specific structures. The variation in

structures is particularly evident in four areas of the state: oversight and regulatory

institutions, state employment, development programs, and electoral rules. By protecting

property, enforcing contracts, and ensuring transparency, state institutions of law and

oversight make it more difficult for rulers to extract rents. However, these institutions are

also necessary to help rulers solidify popular support (by distributing rents) and to

compete with rival elites. Exploitative regimes have the most universal and well-

developed institutions of law and oversight. When politicians compete on policy

programs rather than patronage, strong formal institutions are necessary to ensure

economic growth, appeal to voters’ senses of fairness, and constrain successors’ abilities

to undermine or punish previous leaders. Exploitative elites are unlikely to capture the

state through disruptive tactics like the seizure of property and are constrained by

competition in the amount they can extract from the state. Fusion and clientelist regimes,

however, also face incentives to build monitoring, tax collection, and oversight

capabilities in order to effectively distribute patronage and monitor loyalty. Unlike

exploitative regimes, however, these formal institutions are placed under partisan control

and only employed when they benefit the ruling regime. Elites in these distributive

regimes are eager to take personal credit for rent distribution and therefore eschew

“quasistate” arrangements, such as independent authorities and contractors, that are

popular in exploitative regimes. Finally, without either competitive or distributive

pressure, the rulers of predatory regimes have no incentive to check their rent-seeking

with any formal institutions and simply let state capacity wither away.

Elites can also extract rents and maintain support through public hiring and

development programs. Both allow rulers to target key constituencies or to enrich

themselves. Distributive regimes—fusion and clientelism—reward supporters with jobs

and targeted development programs such as loans and infrastructure. They have a large

number of state employees, particularly concentrated in sectors like healthcare and

education that provide benefits to supporters, and a large number of contingent and

targeted development goods. Although programs are conditioned on political support and

create dependence on the ruling elites, they nonetheless have some benevolent function,

as they provide benefits to constituents and expand state capacity (partially in order to

monitor the loyalty and subservience of beneficiaries). In contrast, predatory regimes

siphon off public payrolls and programs to enrich the rulers using outright fraud and

expropriation without regard for citizens. These regimes have the highest wage bills but

the lowest levels of actual public employment, as salaries go to a small number of

powerful officials and are siphoned off by corruption. Self-interested exploitative rulers

use public employment, not to enrich themselves materially, but to enrich the resources

under their political control. Instead of expanding patronage jobs, they increase their

political power by expanding central state agencies and hiring from their elite supporters.

Electoral rules are only a relevant consideration in competitive regimes, but

differences emerge between the voting methods used in clientelistic and exploitative

systems. Clientelism requires that individual candidates be able to take credit for their

accomplishments. States with a long tradition of distributive politics have therefore

frequently adopted personalized voting methods such as the single nontransferable vote

and open-list proportional representation. However, states without a clientelistic tradition

also use these methods, so it is more likely that clientelism influences the choice of

voting system than vice versa. Exploitative regimes eschew individual credit and blame

in favor of strong parties by using systems such as closed-list or semi-open proportional

representation. In the Central and Eastern European countries that typify exploitation—

unlike in countries that typify clientelism—electoral rules preceded the creation of an

extractive regime type. The state crisis engendered by the fall of the Soviet Union

enabled unusually rapid oscillation between state capture strategies, in part via rapid

changes in institutions. Political systems rarely offer the opportunity for such rapid

change in regime type: expectations and institutions typically alter slowly through

gradually increasing competition, demographic changes, and economic development. The

choices elites make about distribution and competition, and therefore the choices they

make about state capture and state building, are conditioned on deeply-rooted historical

events and institutions.

3. Paul D. Hutchcroft, “The Politics of Privilege: Assessing the Impact of Rents, Corruption, and Clientelism on Third World Development,” Political Studies 45, no. 3 (1997), pp. 649–658.

All political systems have some degree of particularistic privilege that benefits a

small segment of the population. Privilege is particularly widespread in the developing

world, where elites frequently obtain state resources for personal or political benefit.

Scholars have variously described these “politics of privilege” using three different

approaches: rent-seeking, corruption, and clientelism. While each framework has

contributed a unique perspective on politics, none has comprehensively assessed how

particularistic privilege impacts development in the societies where it is most widespread.

Drawing on all three strands of literature, Paul D. Hutchcroft argues that an “eclectic

approach” (pg. 639) is necessary to develop a comprehensive understanding of the

relationship between particularistic politics and development. He reviews the strengths

and weaknesses of each strand and poses seven questions that scholars interested in the

interrelated phenomena must answer to analyze when privilege is harmful and when it is

harmless.

Hutchcroft’s eclectic approach draws useful insight from both rent theory and

clientelism but seems most attached to the framework of corruption. This perspective

avoids the ideological bias of rent theory, which holds that governments distort markets

and are inherently bad, and can “move into other terrain” (pg. 643) to examine the

distinction between public and private spheres. It therefore plays closer attention to

institutional design (whether a political system distinguishes between public and private

spheres), to nonmarket forms of privilege based on personal ties, and to the broader

political context (whether corruption promotes or inhibits political change). In public

discourse, corruption is a far more meaningful concept than rent-seeking and can connect

with practical political movements against corruption. Rent theory is useful because it

offers insights into the market processes that often drive privilege, but it fails to

distinguish between who captures rents, how rents are distributed, and privileges that

create generalizable policy benefits (lobbying) or excludable benefits (bribes). Although

purely market-driven privilege is distinct from clientelism, Hutchcroft argues that most

privilege is based at least in part on personal connection and that the paradigm of

clientelism can help explain the nonmarket aspects of corruption and rents. Its major

limitation in describing nonmarket forces is that it considers affective ties but not

coercive ones.

Unifying these three approaches can help clarify the effects of privilege on economic

development. To this extent, Hutchcroft proposes seven area of inquiry “that are useful in

beginning to assess the differential impact of rents, corruption, and clientelism” (pg. 646)

and understanding when privilege is pernicious and when it is benign or even beneficial.

He first asks under what circumstances is corruption “relatively more variable or

calculable” (pg. 646). In other words: when do bribes function as unofficial taxes that can

be easily figured into routine business and when do they introduce a high degree of risk

and require large amounts of time to negotiate. Hutchcroft suggests that they are likely to

be more calculable when the formal power of institutions is relatively strong and when

informal, clientelistic lines of authority closely follow formal lines of authority. Under

these circumstances, corruption’s barriers to development are relatively minimal.

Next, Hutchcroft argues that scholars must understand where rents go: how they are

allocated and spent. The distribution of rents can occur via “rent-seeking” in which

groups expend resources to compete for rents, and “rent deployment” in which rents are

allocated by authorities with little competition from below. This distinction determines

how many resources are consumed unproductively fighting for control of rents. Rent

deployment, which is more likely to occur in a centralized economy, can be more

efficient then rent-seeking, because it avoids wasting resources in directly unproductive

activities like lobbying and bribes. Regardless of whom rents are allocated to, scholars

must also ask how they are subsequently invested. States that deploy rents must ensure

that their allocations are invested productively to serve development goals, rather than for

unproductive personal or political activities. If rents are sought after rather than deployed,

determining their utility for promoting growth and capital accumulation is even more

difficult: scholars cannot judge distribution against a clear, systematic goal and instead

must speculate about individual motivations. If rents are effectively deployed towards

promoting economic growth, as in South Korea, privilege may be beneficial. However, if

rents are captured for other goals, they may impede good governance.

Rents are particularly pernicious if they impede the development of other effective

institutions required for development. Hutchcroft’s next three questions probe the

relationship between rents and markets, parties, and state bureaucracies. He first evokes

Doner and Ramsay’s distinction between “competitive clientelism,” which fosters

markets and competition, and “monopoly clientelism,” which erects barriers to

competition and inhibits markets, to address whether corruption impedes markets and

competition. In some cases, privilege may allow businesses to circumvent poorly

developed state policies, avoiding price ceilings and excessive regulations. However,

Hutchcroft is skeptical of claims that corruption can increase state capacity to pursue

development goals. Even “speed payments,” which expedite but do not distort

government decisions, create a structural incentive for bureaucratic sluggishness so that

bureaucrats receive bribes for fast work. If agencies and parties—formal lines of

authority—closely coincide with informal lines of authority, then the rents collected by

leaders might strengthen overall formal institutions. Political parties in the developed

world began as means for extracting particularistic benefits, and, under certain

circumstances, parties that receive rents can develop into robust institutions. Further

research is needed to understand how many resources corruption diverts away from state

spending on development projects such as policing and infrastructure and how this

diversion varies between the upper and lower levels of government, between different

agencies, and between democratic and authoritarian political systems.

Finally, Hutchcroft asks what other factors might mitigate the impact of privilege on

politics, and what further research can help answer the set of questions he lays out.

Although the “basic notion of countervailing factors is valid” (pg. 657), differences in

how countries have capitalized on (or failed to capitalize on) countervailing factors such

as natural resources, foreign aid, investor confidence, and internal reformers rests in large

part on the nature of privilege in developing societies. Likewise, some societies may have

internal limits on the scope of corruption, but these limits are also likely to depend on the

nature of privilege. In order to give more definite answers to the questions Hutchcroft

poses, further research into the politics of privilege is needed. This research should

explore the nature of privilege in three ways. It should develop metrics for measuring

both how calculable corruption is and how much it siphons off from development

spending, it should explore the connections between various forms of corruption within a

society, and it should seek to understand when societies are likely to develop an internal

sense of limits to corruption.

4. Phillip Keefer and Razvan Vlaicu, “Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism,” Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 24, no. 2 (October 2008), pp. 371–406.

Quality of governance varies sharply across democratic countries. While some

democratic governments allocate resources efficiently by investing in public goods,

others impede development by ignoring it and serve instead as vehicles to provide rent-

seeking politicians and their supporters with private goods. Phillip Keefer and Razvan

Vlaicu argue that the differences in the quality of democratic governance are caused by

politicians’ differing abilities to make credible policy commitments. Where political

institutions are weak, politicians are unable to make credible commitments directly to

voters. Instead they rely on clientelism by channeling private goods through political

elites and depending on these elites’ inherent credibility with their clients to communicate

policy platforms. Democracies that extend suffrage without an infrastructure of parties

and free media risk falling into a vicious cycle of clientelism and political and economic

stagnation.

Formal models of governance routinely use expenditures on public goods to measure

the quality of governance: well-governed countries spend relatively heavily on public

goods and less so on other items. Keefer and Vlaicu, however, assert that much of the

existing literature on government spending decision-making is deficient, as it makes

broad assumptions about the credibility of politicians. The existing models either assume

that politicians’ commitments are always credible to all voters or that they are never

credible to any voters. Keefer and Vlaicu argue that modeling a variable and endogenous

relationship between politician and voter provides several benefits. First, it sheds light on

the role of patronage in determining policy. Second, it can explain the conditions under

which strong institutions and credible commitments can emerge and overcome

clientelism. Finally, it explains how clientelism functions without deep social cleavages

that encourage relationships between politicians and specific groups of supporters.

Politicians can choose between two strategies for making policy commitments that

attract support from voters. They may either develop their credibility directly with voters

or develop their relationship with patrons who can then vouch for politicians to their

clients (organizing voters indirectly). Establishing direct credibility entails four costly

preconditions for candidates, who must communicate a policy platform to voters, hold

themselves accountable to their policy platforms by communicating their actions, solve

the collective action dilemma caused by voting by reducing the cost individuals incur,

and demonstrate that they can keep track of and fulfill their own targeted commitments to

voters. These preconditions require developing institutions such as parties and the media.

By contrast, relying on patrons requires little investment in institutions. Patrons are by

definition trusted by their clients, so politicians who make credible commitments to

patrons win the support of their clients. Because clientelistic politicians make themselves

directly credible to a small fraction of the population, they expend fewer resources

demonstrating their trustworthiness.

To examine the impact of these choices, the authors consider the equilibrium

outcomes of formal voting models. They compare the levels of public goods, rents,

transfers, and tax outputs that emerge when politicians can only build direct credibility

and when they can choose to build either direct credibility (through institutions) or

indirect credibility (through patrons).

The authors draw three broad conclusions on the effects of clientelism. Overall

welfare in a clientelistic political system is likely to be less widespread than it would be

in a scenario with fully credible politicians. Furthermore, “the most notable development

pathologies—high rents and excessive emphasis on benefits for narrow groups of voters

—emerge even in the absence of patrons” (pg. 23) when politicians need to build their

credibility. Lack of credibility, not clientelism, is the root of poor governance. However,

because clientelism reduces the provision of public goods, it can create a vicious cycle

where politicians are unwilling to devote resources to institution-building.

Keefer and Vlaicu pursue three strategies for verifying these conclusions empirically.

First, quantitative evidence shows that younger democracies (which are likely to be less

credible) exhibit higher levels of corruption and narrowly targeted, clientelistic public

spending and confirms that young democracies emphasize narrow transfers over broad

investment in public goods. Second, a qualitative comparison of Victorian England and

the Dominican Republic shows that states that possess credible political leaders prior to

the extension of suffrage demonstrate better governance following democratization. On

the eve of political reform in 19th century England, politicians were already engaged in

vigorous policy-oriented debates, while civil service laws and restrictions on “private

legislation” inhibited patronage. By contrast, the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the

Dominican Republic systematically prohibited individuals from articulating independent

opinions on policy and utilized targeted transfers to maintain support. The failure of

strong parties and civil society to emerge following Trujillo’s death in 1961 suggests that

liberal democracy is more likely to succeed when “endowed with political competitors

with well-known policy stances who are immediately able to make credible promises

when elections are introduced” (pg. 3). Third, the rise of clientelistic politics among

immigrants—who are unlikely to be concerned with ideological debates between parties

or to trust promises made by either party—suggest that politicians do use clientelistic

strategies when building direct trust is difficult.

The lesson Keefer and Vlaicu draw from the evidence is that the level of credibility in

a political system is an important factor in governance regardless of the particular

institutional designs used in government: proportional versus majoritarian representation,

presidentialism versus parliamentarism, and limited versus unlimited government.

However, further research is needed to understand how these institutional constraints

interact with credibility and “how the pursuit of credibility by politicians affects the

relationship between institutions and policy outcomes such as spending and the security

of property rights” (pg. 36).

5. Philip Keefer, “Clientelism, Credibility, and the Policy Choices of Young Democracies,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 4 (October 2007), pp. 804–821.

Contrary to the predictions of democratic theory, some democracies fail to effectively

provide public goods to their citizens. They are plagued by corruption, overprovide

private and club goods such as public works projects and state jobs, and underprovide

public goods such as education, information, and property rights. They are clientelistic

instead of programmatic. Philip Keefer argues that the differences between effective,

programmatic democracies and ineffective, clientelistic democracies are closely related to

age: young democracies are less likely to be effective because political competitors face

difficulties in making credible policy commitments. Without established policy

reputations, politicians in young democracies often pursue clientelistic strategies for

winning elections that consume less of politicians’ resources but distort policymaking.

Controlling for other possible factors that influence the quality of democracy, the age of a

democracy has a significant impact on rent-seeking and expenditures, and the quality of

democracy appears to improve as democracies age. This is most likely the result of

improving credibility, because other links between age and clientelism are theoretically

deficient and do not predict the observed relationship. However, it is unclear what factors

distinguish democracies that improve as they age from those that collapse.

Countries with less democratic experience should, on average, have higher levels of

clientelism, because politicians in these countries often cannot make credible policy

commitments. Keefer argues that initially non-credible politicians need to build their

credibility in order to make policy commitments that attract voters. Politicians can invest

resources in building direct credibility with voters by buying votes, advertising,

canvassing, and supporting strong parties and the media. Alternatively, they can build

indirect credibility with voters by purchasing the support of intermediary patrons who are

credible with voters. Patrons are indifferent about public goods and are only interested in

targeted goods that they can distribute to their clients and skim from for personal gain.

When politicians choose to build credibility through patrons, they provide more private

than public goods in order to attract the support of patrons. Politicians in young regimes

are more likely to have a credibility deficit and therefore use patrons: policy reputations

take time to build (although the passage of time does not necessarily build policy

reputations), and regimes without credibility tend to fall.

Because there is no direct way to measure credibility, Keefer considers whether age

impacts clientelistic policies, whether that impact is theoretically compatible with

increasing credibility, and whether alternative theories could also explain the link

between age, clientelism, and performance. Keefer uses seven measures to operationalize

three aspects of governance that contrast programmatic and clientelistic regimes: rent-

seeking (corruption scores from the International Country Risk Guide), nontargeted

goods provision (rule of law and bureaucratic quality scores from the International

Country Risk Guide, secondary school enrollment, and the market share of privately-

owned newspapers), and targeted goods provision (government wages and public

investment as percentages of GDP). The model measures the age of a country’s

democracy, its dependent variable, by counting the time period of competitive executive

and legislative elections. Controlling for population area, wealth, population age, and

urbanization, the effects of the age of a democracy are both statistically significant and

large in magnitude, particularly for levels of corruption, quality of rule of law, and levels

of school enrollment.

Other variables correlate with age but fail to explain the link between age and

clientelism. Only increasing credibility is a compelling explanation. Empirically, age is

consistently significant even when these other variables are introduced, whereas the new

variables are only intermittently significant. Theoretically, increased credibility should

curb rent-seeking and private good provision and increase public provision, unlike other

possible explanations for the poor performance of young democracies. The policies of

old, programmatic democracies reflect these patterns. Civil war and poor access to

information in young democracies should reduce politicians’ accountability for providing

both private and public goods and therefore decrease private good provision in favor of

rent-seeking. Fractionalization should either diminish the provision of private goods

(because voters will support coethnic candidates regardless of their policy performance)

or should decrease rent-seeking (because politicians exhaust state resources targeting

swing voters) instead of increasing both private goods provision and rent-seeking. Young

democracies’ majoritarianism should likewise curtail rent-seeking as politicians target

swing voters, and their presidentialism should diminish spending on private goods

because politicians cannot make credible agreements with each other. It is unlikely that

lurking variables or reverse causality drive the relationship between age of democracy

and quality of governance: latitude and British colonial heritage, which serve as

imperfect proxies for the age of democracy but are not plausibly related to contemporary

policy choices, are significant in predicting clientelistic policies. Conversely, plausible

lurking variables—religion, government expenditures, and length of leaders’ tenure in

office—have little impact on the model.

Although there is no way to directly measure whether credibility drives the

relationship between a democracy’s age and performance, several factors suggest that

credibility is a likely cause. No other potential link is theoretically accurate and

empirically significant in explaining the relationship between democratic age and

clientelistic policies, while reverse causality and lurking variables are unlikely. However,

it is less clear why political competitors in some countries develop credibility, while

political competitors in other countries do not develop credibility and sometimes relapse

into authoritarianism. Panel data finds that corruption, rule of law, bureaucratic quality,

and government wages all fall as countries gain democratic experience, and public

investment falls after a brief initial rise. Younger democracies are not doomed to be

eternally non-credible and clientelistic, as increasing credibility is a vital part of building

political institutions and a potentially important component of economic growth.

However, not all democratic experience leads to credibility. In some cases, democracies’

inability to establish credibility may lead to political stagnation or authoritarian relapse.

Understanding the link between clientelism, credibility, and governance does not explain

when political competitors choose to build their credibility, and when they choose to let it

languish. Further research should explore this direction.

6. Mushtaq H. Khan, “Markets, States, and Democracy: Patron-Client Networks and the Case for Democracy in Developing Countries,” Democratization 12, no. 5 (December 2005), pp. 704–724.

The relationship between democratization and economic growth is an important and

contested subject in political science. While it is clear that wealthy countries are more

likely to be democratic than poor countries, it is not as obvious whether democracy

promotes development and or vice versa. Several poor democracies and rich dictatorships

exist. Although theorists have developed several reasons why democracy should promote

economic development, Mushtaq Khan argues that these theories ignore the clientelistic

operation of democracy in poor countries. The clientelistic political systems of these

countries are rational: actors base their behavior on rational calculations of self-interest

rather than on traditional deference to authority. Clientelism endures because the

economic structure of developing nations incentivizes the use of informal institutions

over formal ones. Democratization is not likely to change this economic structure and is

therefore unlikely to undermine clientelism and promote growth.

Regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian, developing countries tend

to be characterized by the deficiency of formal institutions. Political contestation is

organized around factions dominated by a personalistic leader that attract support by

offering material benefits to followers. Economic activity includes a large informal sector

not regulated by the official state, “non-market accumulation processes” (pg. 712), and

extensive rent-seeking by politicians. In this context, “democracy or authoritarianism

appears at best to modify the nature” (pg. 712) of informal institutions and the outcomes

they yield without altering the underlying logic of politics. In some respects, the

institutional gap between wealthy and poor democracies is greater than the gap between

poor authoritarian and democratic countries: poor democracies have weaker institutions,

are less likely to consolidate, and are therefore more like to relapse into authoritarianism

than their wealthier cousins.

Without strong formal institutions, the traditional arguments that democracy

engenders economic development are flawed. Khan sees four main arguments linking

democracy with development: information, efficiency, stability, and rationality. First,

democracy could be beneficial to development because “the competition for office

reveals information for current and future policy-makers” (pg. 706) that allows

government either to identify public desires, make better policy choices, or avoid

catastrophic disasters. Second, as Douglass North argues, democracy can reduce the

transactional costs of building coalitions, so that winning coalitions support policies when

the benefits to winners exceed the costs to losers—in other words, when policies are

economically sound. Third, democracies can provide stable rules of succession and

disperse the benefits of rents and taxes among a larger number of individuals, as Mancur

Olson argues. Finally, in the neo-Weberian school of thought, democracy is the rational

organization of the state, just as capitalism is the rational organization of the economy. If

the state behaves irrationally in its interactions with markets, these markets cannot be

truly rational.

In practice, none of these arguments function in developing countries where

governments are characterized by extensive clientelism. Democracy does not necessarily

improve the quality of information both because well-organized patron-client networks

with parochial interests have more resources to collect and critically evaluate public

policy, and because these groups are able to dominate perceptions of the public will and

public interest. Nor does democracy necessarily promote utilitarian policy outcomes:

since the transaction costs of building coalitions never actually approach zero, entrenched

coalitions dominate politics, employ obfuscation and force instead of negotiation, and

obtain benefits at the expense of less-organized groups. The stability of democracies

carries a dark side with it, as entrenched political factions are able to seek rents and—as

Olson acknowledged—require periodic destruction to ensure a smoothly functioning

political system.

Democracy, at least by itself, is unlikely to undermine clientelism. Khan is highly

critical of the neo-Weberian belief that democratic rule is necessarily rational.

Clientelistic politicians are not motivated by tradition and deference to authority as in the

traditional patrimonial state, but by structural economic factors that make clientelism

rational for political actors in the developing world. In economically advanced countries,

the ubiquity of capitalism creates shared interests among socioeconomic sectors and

society as a whole, while economically developing countries have less of a universal

interest in capitalism and rational society. Khan highlights four advantages developed

states possess for promoting rational rule. First, most people are directly or indirectly

dependent upon the “capitalist sector” (pg. 715) for their well-being. Second, the

extensive financial and regulatory resources of the state allow factions to achieve

redistributive goals through “marginal changes” (pg. 716) in policy and create unified

interests and interest groups among members of industrial and social sectors fighting to

make regulatory and financial policies. Third, most economic activities produce large

economic surpluses. This gives individuals and businesses the incentives and financial

resources necessary to resist states’ attempts to usurp productive property (capital) and

restrict productive activity (labor). Finally, the states possess stronger enforcement

capacities for the rare occasions when factional self-interest does threaten overall well-

being. By contrast, the more limited scope of capitalism in the developing world makes

anticapitalist behavior appealing to significant social sectors, while the limited regulatory

and fiscal powers of the state encourages political actors to find other sources of power

and discourages the formation of unified interest groups representing social sectors.

Under these circumstance, political actors aim to “mobilize organizational power at the

lowest cost to the faction leader, to achieve a redistribution of assets and incomes using a

combination of legal, quasi-legal, or even illegal methods” (pg. 719). Given widespread

poverty, it is most efficient to build alliances with poor voters who will trade their

support for smaller particularistic benefits.

Although Khan rejects the notion that authoritarianism is necessary for development,

he also rejects the notion that democracy is necessary for development. The features that

link political regime with economic performance must be examined in finer detail: some

clientelistic structures are capable of sustaining economic growth, as in India, and

perhaps leading to the eventual rationalization of both politics and economics. In other

cases, however, different clientelistic arrangements do appear to have led to stagnation

and to have undermined the welfare of citizens. In short, clientelism is an important

element of a country’s political system, but an element that is independent of democracy

and tied more closely to economic development. Although democracy may be desirable

for many reasons, its success in promoting economic growth is contingent on the prior

existence of a developed capitalist sector.

7. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson, “Citizen-Politician Linkages: An Introduction,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I.

Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pg. 1–49.

Political science often assumes that voters hold politicians accountable for general

social welfare via public goods. However, in most of the developing world—and some of

the developed world—this is not the exclusive or even primary relationship between

voters and politicians. Instead, voters’ relationship with politicians takes the form of “a

transaction, the direct exchange of a citizen’s vote in return for direct payments or

continuing access to employment, goods, and services” (pg. 2) in which public policy

plays a marginal role. In other words, voters’ relationship with politicians takes the form

of clientelism. The persistence of this relationship in democracies throughout the world is

the subject of Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson’s book, Patrons, Clients, and

Policies. What distinguishes programmatic and clientelistic accountability? What causes

clientelism to take hold in some places but not in others? In their introduction, Kitschelt

and Wilkinson argue that clientelism, as a mode of exchange between voters and

politicians, is distinguished by the private and contingent nature of benefits, the

predictable compliance of citizens as a direct result of the benefits, and the monitoring of

voting behavior when compliance is not voluntary and spontaneous. The presence of

these elements in political linkages between voters and politicians is determined by the

interactions between the levels of economic development, interparty competition,

politicized economic governance, and ethnic heterogeneity.

The authors define clientelistic exchange as a relationship between voters and

politicians characterized by three factors: contingent direct exchange, voter predictability

and elasticity, and monitoring. The goods that politicians deliver to voters must be

directly contingent upon voters’ support for the winning politicians. As such, clientelistic

politicians focus on delivering private goods (such as jobs) and club goods (such as local

infrastructure) that can be provided selectively to some citizens, rather than public goods

(such as economic growth) that cannot. Furthermore, voting behavior must be predictable

and elastic in order for the use of excludable goods to be effective in obtaining office:

voters should consistently cast votes for the party providing them with benefits, and these

benefits should “tip the balance” (pg. 13) towards voters’ support for a party. Lastly,

unless a party is confident that voters will follow through with their promised political

support, it must have a means of monitoring voters, which can be accomplished by

violating the secrecy of the ballot or by asking voters to individually pledge support for a

candidate. However, it is usually more efficient to monitor groups of voters by making

deals with the leaders of cohesive groups, monitoring public opinion polls and election

results, and accepting a limited degree of moral hazard. Carrying out this contractual

relationship between voters and politicians entails the costly development of party

institutions, such as local party offices and supportive grassroots networks, to distribute

state resources to voters, monitor voting behavior, and attract private resources from

economically wealthy but vote-poor backers. This strategy will only be more appealing

than the alternatives—programmatic, personalistic, or performance appeals—under

certain economic and social circumstances. Kitschelt and Wilkinson embrace a broadly

“developmentalist” perspective that economic development, mediated through social and

political institutions, shape the linkages between voters and politicians. Clientelism can

be explained through four dimensions of historical development: wealth, party

competition, ethnic cleavage, and political economy.

Economic development, interacting with other factors, impacts both the demand for

and the supply of clientelistic linkages. On the demand side, economic development

determines the utility of clientelism for voters. At a very low level of economic

development, people have little use for state resources and little integration into social

networks that extend to the central state. Development first increases the demand for

clientelism by solidifying citizens’ integration into social groups that demand and use

state resources, then decreases demand as narrow clientelistic linkages are superseded by

broad, programmatically-oriented class and professional linkages. Furthermore, as

citizens’ wealth increases, they accept present losses for future benefits, understand the

benefits that policy changes will bring in the long run, and “become entirely indifferent to

clientelistic-targeted goods and therefore incur zero opportunity cost when their favorite

programmatic party loses to a clientelistic contender” (pg. 25). However, development

can also deepen inequality, exacerbate cleavages in heterogeneous societies, and

therefore increase the demand for ethnically targeted club goods.

Poverty also makes vote buying more appealing. Low voter mobility makes

delivering goods and monitoring support easy. As national wealth increases, parties gain

access to more financial resources, but the linear increase in resources is generally

outstripped by the exponentially increasing cost of vote buying: additional handouts

become marginally less meaningful and developed economies grow “increasingly

vulnerable to the market distortions” (pg. 26–27) of clientelistic distribution. Social

heterogeneity may make clientelism either more or less appealing in a developed society.

If some constituencies reject clientelistic politics, politicians may follow suit to maintain

party cohesion, but the durability of ethnocultural networks makes ethnic clientelistic

blocs an appealing source of votes for politicians. Finally, media in a developed society

will often “feed on reporting clientelistic practices” (pg. 27) and inhibit clientelism if

significant segments of society frowns on it.

While economic development usually impedes clientelism, patterns of interparty

competition may inhibit or fuel it, depending in part on the level of economic

development. When competition is intense, parties go to greater lengths to develop

linkages with voters, but these linkages may be either clientelistic or programmatic.

Under conditions of high economic development, programmatic appeals are usually more

appealing because the demand for clientelism is low and some voters may be actively

opposed to clientelistic practices. Under conditions of low economic development,

however, the low marginal cost of buying off additional voters promotes an expansion of

clientelism. When ethnic networks are dense and competition is high, politicians attempt

to utilize ethnicity to secure marginal but decisive votes regardless of the level of

development, and universalistic programmatic appeals quickly become losing

propositions because they are ineffective with a small but critical portion of the

electorate. Without competition, clientelism can often endure even in developed societies

until some external shock transforms the party system.

In Japan and elsewhere, the shocks to clientelism have been economic changes that

undermine the politicization of the economy. Although a politicized economy may be

partially a result of clientelism, it is exogenous in important respects that justify its

inclusion as a causal factor. A politicized economic regime that precedes democratization

can still have an impact on clientelism in a democratic system. Within developed

capitalist systems, “coordinated market capitalism” that depends on sector-wide

coordination, incremental innovation, and large organizations is conducive to clientelism

because the state can efficiently play a large role in organizing economic activity; the

economic decline of these industries in favor of more decentralized knowledge- and

personnel-oriented sectors has impeded clientelism and contributed to shocks. Politicized

economies and clientelism are likely to emerge when rulers are existentially threatened or

perfectly secure, and therefore face no incentive to protect property rights for their long-

term economic gain. Under intense interparty competition, ethnic division of labor is

likely to cause an ethnicized—and therefore politicized—economic regime. Politicized

economic governance, in turn, threatens to impede growth and interparty competition,

therefore exerting an additional indirect influence on clientelism. High competition

coupled with high development is likely to cause pressure for professionalization, but

high competition and low development are likely to encourage economic politicization

and clientelism as a means of securing votes.

The legacy of economic institutions (governance regimes and development levels)

and social institutions (ethnocultural cleavages) plays a large role in determining the

relationship between citizens and politicians and far outshadows the role of formal

political institutions. Electoral rules and executive-legislative relations may impact the

methods that parties and politicians choose to pursue linkage, but “politicians find a way

to ‘work around’ electoral institutions” (pg. 43) and other formal rules to develop

clientelistic linkages if doing so is beneficial. Institutional rules cannot explain the

presence of clientelism across highly centralized, highly personalistic, and moderate

systems alike, or the evolution of linkages over time. In short, the incentives that

structure political decisions—economic development, interparty competition, political

economy, and ethnic heterogeneity—are powerful enough to supersede formal rules in

determining the relationships between citizens and politicians.

8. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson, “A Research Agenda for the Study of

Citizen-Politician Linkages and Democratic Accountability” in Patrons, Clients, and

Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert

Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),

pp. 322–343.

The greatest challenge in studying clientelism is developing good ways to measure

the phenomenon. Most scholars, including the contributors to Kitschelt and Wilkinson’s

edited volume, have relied on a combination of qualitative studies and idiosyncratic

quantitative proxies that examine clientelism in a single country. While both methods

have provided valuable insights, they do not allow for systematic comparative studies

that could explore the consequences of clientelism in greater depth. Well-designed expert

surveys could overcome the problems of conceptually delineating clientelism and

objectively classifying observed practices to develop quantitative cross-national data,

which would enable scholars to definitively test the relationship between clientelism and

political outcomes like growth, equality, and stability. Although scholars often assume

that clientelism harms all three outcomes, these assumptions are not entirely compelling.

Clientelistic and programmatic democracies are both susceptible to rent-seeking special

interests and can produce widely varying levels of redistribution. Although clientelism

can impede economic growth and political stability, it only seems likely to do so given

certain economic structures, levels of development, and sets of political actors.

Examining the consequences of clientelism requires developing a comprehensive and

quantitative method of measuring it. Although researchers have succeeded in quantifying

programmatic linkages, there is not a one-to-one tradeoff between programmatic and

clientelistic linkages. Measuring clientelism presents three unique problems. First,

scholars must conceptually identify clientelism precisely enough to distinguish between

the clientelistic and programmatic distribution of club goods such as local infrastructure

projects. Second, scholars must standardize the subjective interpretation and

classification of behavior: clientelistic exchanges are often embedded in long-term

relationships and are not clear-cut transactions, which makes them difficult for outsiders

to detect. Third, scholars must see through strategic misrepresentation: patrons and

clients often misrepresent their behavior to avoid violating norms and laws.

Kitschelt and Wilkinson suggest surveying panels of ten to twenty academic experts

on selected countries to assess the linkage strategies of major parties by giving numeric

scores for four modules of questions that measure the prevalence of exchanges involving

private and club goods, the presence of vote monitoring, parties’ organizational

capabilities for monitoring voters and coordinating policy platforms, and the nature and

extent of parties’ programmatic and charismatic appeals. Numeric scores on each

question would be tied to concrete examples and practices that standardize the rating

scale across countries and avoid the bias of different political cultures. It is impossible to

achieve perfect objectivity—“the Danes may interpret a practice as scandalously

clientelistic that would hardly register” (pg. 328) in Italy—but panels of well-studied

experts could produce systematic, quantitative, and relatively objective evaluations of

clientelism.

Quantifying clientelistic linkages would open up an important new research frontier

on the consequences of clientelism for growth, equity, and democratic stability. Most

contemporary scholars believe that clientelism is harmful to all three outcomes, but their

beliefs have little empirical support. Kitschelt and Wilkinson agree that “on average, the

prevalence of clientelism may foster more satisfaction of rent-seeking interests, worse

governance, and weaker economic performance” (pg. 334), but they also believe that the

relationship is highly variable and conditional. For example, clientelism seems sufficient

but not necessary to empower rent-seeking special interests. All democracies, whether

programmatic or clientelistic, are vulnerable to special interests. Programmatic

competition may channel excessive resources to inefficient economic sectors and

government bureaucracies. However, democracies also check the worst predatory

excesses by ejecting politicians from office, so the variation in rent-seeking across

democracies is relatively small. Likewise, there is no clear impressionistic evidence that

links clientelism with greater income inequality or the absence of redistributive,

programmatic social policy. In competitive clientelistic regimes, patronage may provide

important protection for poor voters, mitigate the pain of economic liberalization, and

substitute or complement formal social welfare programs.

Clientelism can cause poor economic growth, but it does not necessarily do so. The

link between clientelism and economic growth seems to depend on a country’s

development level and leading industries, although better empirical data is needed to

conclusively examine this relationship. Countries that lag behind the global innovation

frontier can sometimes grow by providing clientelistic benefits, like subsidies and loans,

to key industries in order to develop globally competitive economic sectors. These

developing countries can reap large economic gains from even modest spending on

public goods. Closer to the global innovation frontier, clientelism is potentially dangerous

because the “politicization of market relations” (pg. 336) can impede economic efficiency

and divert spending from the more expensive public goods necessary for growth at high

development levels. However, it is not necessarily harmful if efficient economic sectors

perform well enough to subsidize the modest inefficiencies of clientelistic sectors (for

example, through higher input costs). National economic performance is only endangered

if a country’s leading industries perform poorly or are too heavily taxed by inefficient

clientelism. The viability of clientelism may also depend on the kinds of industries at the

global innovation frontier. Clientelistic developed countries, like Japan and Austria, tend

to have “cooperative market economies” that emphasize incremental innovation, stable

labor forces, and applied vocational skills. These economies can sustain clientelism

because firms can easily develop entrenched partisan networks and can “upgrade the

skills and capabilities of clientelistically recruited wage earners and managers

incrementally” (pg. 338) to transform them into effective workers. However, as the

global innovation frontier has shifted to technology and service industries that demand

radical innovation, formal education, and high turnover, clientelism and cooperative

market economies have become unsustainable. Clientelism and economic growth are not

unrelated, but the relationship is unlikely to be a simple and direct one.

Finally, although clientelism leads to cynicism about democracy, it does not

necessarily lead to the instability or collapse of democratic regimes. There is some

empirical evidence that clientelism creates disillusionment with democracy, probably

because clientelism violates democratic norms. However, clientelism can also buy off

discontent and avert programmatic polarization. For example, parties can ameliorate the

negative consequences of economic liberalization by compensating losers with

particularistic benefits. Clientelistic democracies usually benefit the ruling elites and

rarely provide citizens with “a well-connected stratum of political entrepreneurs that

could help them overcome collective action problems and organize the struggle against

the democratic regime” (pg. 342). Clientelism often exerts a direct stabilizing force on a

regime, although it may also exert an indirectly destabilizing force when it impedes

economic growth. The magnitude of these effects, however, can only be tested by

developing stronger data sets and continuing innovative research into citizen-politician

linkages.

9. Luigi Manzetti and Carole J. Wilson, “Why Do Corrupt Governments Maintain Public Support?” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 8 (August 2007), pp. 949–970.

Corruption is endemic in many democracies. Although voters in these countries

sometimes punish corrupt politicians by removing them from office, this does not always

occur. Some politicians and parties enjoy widespread public support and continue to win

elections despite their reputation for corruption. Luigi Manzetti and Carole J. Wilson

argue that corrupt governments are able to maintain public support where weak state

institutions allow them to distribute patronage and buy off a critical mass of voters. When

states are ineffective, corrupt politicians have both the opportunity and the resources to

fulfill people’s unmet needs through clientelistic networks, and citizens are unlikely to be

critical of corruption. As state effectiveness increases, however, citizens become less

dependent on and tolerant of corruption. Because corrupt governments in weak

democracies generally have little external pressure and few internal incentives to improve

governance, political reform is likely to occur only gradually and with international

pressure.

Weak states provide both the supply and the demand for clientelism, and therefore

undermine political accountability. Because these states are unable or unwilling to

effectively deliver public goods, they create demand for politicians to provide private

goods as substitutes. Because weak states lack strong checks and balances or professional

civil services, they provide a supply of resources that politicians can divert towards

private, politicized use. Weak states make clientelism an inexpensive and effective

electoral strategy. Under these circumstances, voters are unlikely to punish politicians for

their corruption. By contrast, effective states make clientelism costly and ineffective for

both politicians and citizens, reduce dependence on patronage, and increase the

likelihood that citizens will hold politicians accountable for corruption. Corruption is

more harmful to politicians when strong government institutions make it difficult “to

capture the state apparatus to reward political loyalties and dispense tangible benefits”

(pg. 963) on a scale large enough to maintain popular support.

The interaction between corruption and government effectiveness is a statistically

powerful predictor of popular support for the government. Using individual-level data

from the 1995 World Values Survey and national quality of governance data, Manzetti

and Wilson modeled public support for the current political leadership in 14 countries.

Respondents were asked how widespread they believed corruption and bribery were

among public officials and how satisfied they were with current political leaders.

Corruption perceptions, inflation, and subjective economic well-being were all significant

in determining respondents’ satisfaction with current leaders. However, when

governments were less effective and provided opportunities for clientelism, the impact of

corruption on public opinion was more pronounced. Forty-three percent of hypothetical

average citizens living under the least effective government observed in the survey will

support that government if they believe political corruption is endemic, while fifty-six

percent of these same citizens will support the government if they believe corruption is

virtually nonexistent. By contrast, only twenty percent of hypothetical citizens in a

country with the most effective observed government will support that government if

they believe it is endemically corrupt, and sixty percent will support the government if

they believe corruption is minimal. The quality of governance has little impact on public

opinion when corruption is low (public approval varies from 56 to 60 percent), but good

governance actually leads to a large and statistically significant drop in public support

(public approval drops from 43 percent to 20 percent) when corruption is high. As the

authors explain, “those who perceive high levels of corruption are significantly less likely

to punish the government in countries where government effectiveness is low…because

they are likely to be beneficiaries of patronage” (pg. 962).

Corrupt politicians’ dependence on weak states has both positive and negative

implications. Because corrupt politicians are able to maintain support by exploiting weak

state institutions for political gain, weak democracies face an uphill battle in building

capacity and improving governance. Corrupt incumbents have a disincentive to reform,

and challengers are unlikely to attract support unless they build their own clientelistic

networks. The 2002 fiscal crisis in Argentina, for example, has expanded the power of

the ruling Peronist party by increasing the number of impoverished citizens who depend

on patronage; neoliberal leaders across the developing world, including Argentina’s

Carlos Menem, have enthusiastically tackled macroeconomic reforms but have not

reformed political institutions. Any change will most likely occur gradually and depend

in part on international donors’ insistence on anticorruption and political reform

measures. However, once countries develop strong state institutions, corrupt governments

are unlikely to stay in power, as corrupt leaders cannot buy votes when they cannot

exploit the state. For countries that lie in between the two extremes of governance, the

fate of corrupt leaders is not predestined. In this middle ground, the most important

battles between machines and reformers will be fought.

10. Simeon Nichter, “Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 1 (February 2008), pp. 19–31.

Studies of clientelism and machine politics have often examined political parties’

attempts to buy votes. Conventional wisdom holds that machine parties, such as the

Peronist party in Argentina, provide voters with material inducements before elections in

exchange for support at the ballot box. However, secret ballots complicate vote buying

because they prevent parties from effectively and comprehensively monitoring which

candidates voters select at the ballot box, creating a principal-agent problem. Given this

paradox, Simeon Nichter argues that much of the behavior commonly perceived as vote

buying can be better understood as turnout buying: instead of paying voters to cast their

vote for a particular candidate once at the polling place, machines pay voters simply to

arrive at the polling place and vote.

In distinguishing between vote buying and turnout buying, Nichter develops a two-

dimensional typology for targeting rewards. Rewards may be targeted at citizens who are

inclined or not inclined to vote in an election and at citizens who favor or do not favor the

party. Vote buying entails targeting indifferent or opposition-supporting citizens who are

likely to vote and requires monitoring vote choice. Turnout buying entails targeting

supportive citizens who are not inclined to vote and requires monitoring turnout. Two

additional strategies in the typology are “rewarding loyalists” (targeting citizens who are

supportive and likely to vote) and “double persuasion” (pg. 20) (targeting citizens who

are unsupportive and unlikely to vote). Although parties and candidates are likely to use

multiple strategies, the relative prevalence of vote buying and turnout buying can be

compared by assessing whether machines target strong supporters (turnout buying) or

weak opponents (vote buying).

Nichter uses the assumptions and data from Susan Stokes’s 2005 analysis of vote

buying clientelism in Argentina to construct an alternate formal model of turnout buying.

He then empirically tests his model against Stokes’s using survey data on Argentine

electoral behavior. The turnout buying model assumes that potential voters face

ideological costs of voting for a party with different policy preferences from themselves,

as well as a constant material cost of voting regardless of who they vote for. Potential

voters choose to vote because of the prospect that they will receive a reward for voting

that will exceed the cost of voting. By contrast, the vote buying model assumes that

potential voters always vote because they face no material cost of voting. In both models,

politicians first pay potential voters and then monitor actual voting behavior, with some

probability that they are able to monitor successfully. Citizens’ ideological views are

endogenous; accepting rewards from a party does not sway citizens’ ideological views. If

a citizen receives a reward and does not honor their agreement with the party, the party

will permanently cease to offer rewards to that citizen.

Although both turnout buying and vote buying are effective strategies under the right

circumstances, Argentine political parties appear to use turnout buying more than vote

buying. Both strategies become more effective as the value of the reward offered to

citizens and the ability of the party to monitor behavior increase, but they require

different behavior from political parties to be effective. Turnout buying is most useful

when parties target individuals who are ideologically close to the party, so that the

ideological cost of voting is lower. Vote buying, however, is most useful when parties

target individuals who are weakly opposed to the party. Because voters have no material

costs of voting, voters who are ideologically supportive of a party will vote for it

regardless of the reward. Parties that target supporters are practicing turnout buying,

while parties that target weak opponents are practicing vote buying. Using Stokes’s

survey data, Nichter assesses which behavior Argentine parties seem to predominantly

use and finds support for her hypothesis of turnout buying. In Argentina, the Peronist

party is noted for distributing clientelistic rewards to citizens. Because citizens supportive

of the Peronist party were most likely to receive rewards, Stokes concludes that parties

distributed most rewards to supporters. Parties appear to be rewarding unmobilized

supporters (persuading them to vote) rather than rewarding mobilized supporters

(recognizing loyalty): those who voted in previous elections were not more likely to

receive rewards.

The distinction between vote buying and turnout buying is theoretically meaningful

but blurry in practice. In theory, Nichter argues that turnout buying can increase

participation among the poor and is less unambiguously negative for democracy,

although it is not without problems. In reality, the distinction between vote buying and

turnout buying is likely to be somewhat unclear for two reasons. First, parties may also

employ a strategy of “double persuasion” to target citizens who are both ideologically

indifferent and unlikely to vote. Second, parties may employ both vote and turnout

buying to attract support from both weak opponents and unmobilized supporters.

Surveying the need for further research, Nichter proposes developing formal models of

parties’ decisions to allocate resources between vote buying and turnout buying

strategies, calls for panel data on voting behavior that can address whether voters’

opinions of parties are swayed by their acceptance of rewards, and notes that further

qualitative research is necessary to examine the assumptions behind formal models.

11. Frederic Charles Schaffer, “Lessons Learned,” in Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying, ed. Frederic Charles Schaffer (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 183–200.

Vote buying is a unique electoral strategy, because it is both a method of voter

mobilization and vote manipulation. However, it is not the only available method of

either mobilization or manipulation. Vote buying has unique costs, benefits, and

organizational prerequisites that condition when politicians chose to buy votes and how

they do so. Because the monetary and organizational costs of vote buying tend to be

fairly high and the benefits fairly low, candidates will only embrace vote buying when

other forms of manipulation are not viable, programmatic campaigning is difficult, and

votes can be bought cheaply. The electoral strategies and tactics that candidates embrace

have diverse political and economic consequences. Most of the consequences associated

with vote buying are negative, but some of these consequences only result from particular

vote buying tactics. Others result from a broad range of mobilization and manipulation

strategies. Combating these consequences is difficult: vote buying is resilient against

most (although not all) reform efforts. To review the causes and consequences of vote

buying highlighted in Elections for Sale, Frederic Charles Schaffer highlights key

questions addressed throughout the volume that explain when vote buying occurs and

what happens when it does.

Vote buying requires sophisticated political organizations and substantial financial

resources, yet it is highly inefficient unless politicians can effectively violate ballot

secrecy. To buy votes, candidates need a grassroots organization of brokers who can use

their local knowledge to identify potential vote sellers and ensure that vote sellers comply

with the bargain. At the same time, candidates and central party offices must avoid

prosecution and monitor brokers to ensure that they are not embezzling funds. To finance

building an expansive organization and distributing handouts, politicians develop

relationships with the party or government, find wealthy backers, or engage in illegal

activity that requires additional organizational capacity. The sums of money required are

large, although the exact amount is difficult to measure precisely. Vote buying is a

“retail” strategy that targets voters individually instead of a more efficient “wholesale

strategy,” such as advertising or restricting opposition parties, that can affect elections en

masse.

While costly, vote buying is not a particularly dependable strategy. Because it is not a

normal market transaction, it cannot be enforced with standard legal mechanisms.

Instead, politicians enforce vote sales with normative inducements, informal sanctions,

contingency payments, and electoral surveillance. The first three methods are generally

ineffective because voters can defect undetected, and empirical evidence suggests that

they do defect more often than not. Only electoral surveillance, which involves exploiting

or violating electoral rules to observe sellers’ voting behavior, is generally effective.

“Negative vote buying” should be particularly common, because it is easier to prevent

individuals from voting than to monitor how they vote, yet it is empirically rare. It is

difficult to identify opposition supporters willing to sell their vote, and attempting to buy

abstention in an opponents’ stronghold can be dangerous for the broker. When

individuals can relinquish their ability to vote by surrendering a voter registration card or

dipping their finger in ink, and when political loyalties can easily be identified based on

ethnicity, negative vote buying does occasionally occur.

Because it has high costs and limited benefits, vote buying is only an attractive

electoral strategy under certain circumstances. First, other strategies for manipulation

must be ineffective. Social change or political enfranchisement can make voters more

independent and less susceptible to outright coercion, making vote buying appealing

when voters are integrated enough into social networks to be effectively targeted, but not

so integrated to be easily controlled. Electoral procedures must also make wholesale

fraud difficult without effectively inhibiting vote buying (retail fraud may be inherently

more difficult to control than wholesale fraud). Second, politicians must prefer vote

buying to other mobilization strategies. Institutional rules encourage vote buying when

they give politicians easy access to state resources, create small electoral districts (raising

the value of individual votes), and encourage intraparty competition (making it difficult

for candidates to distinguish themselves programmatically). However, non-institutional

factors that may vary within countries or extend across regions are equally potent.

Decentralized party systems with large grassroots networks make targeting and

monitoring easier than coordinating policy platforms, particularly when parties can

exploit high income inequality to buy votes cheaply. Finally, in societies where gift-

giving traditions and strong norms of reciprocity pressure vote sellers to behave honestly,

fewer sellers will defect.

Vote buying can have serious consequences for democratic representation, good

governance, and even economic structure. However, because the incentives that

encourage vote buying are so complex, they cause diverse vote buying practices with

different implications. The normative implications of vote buying depend, in part, on

individuals’ motivations for selling their votes. If citizens sell votes merely because they

value large material payoffs, then these citizens’ votes contain no information about their

true policy preferences. By contrast, if citizens sell votes because they are skeptical or

impatient about future programmatic promises, then their voting behavior expresses their

preference for an immediate and certain reward. The economic implications of vote

buying are more severe if politicians buy votes through agricultural landlords who direct

the behavior of their workers: landlords will increase their landholdings in order to gain

more workers and therefore more political power, consolidating land ownership in the

process. Other consequences of vote buying are shared across many electoral strategies:

vote buying and patronage both cause legislators to provide private goods and discourage

legislators from developing unique policy positions and taking credit for legislative

initiatives. Effectively analyzing the consequences of vote buying requires distinguishing

consequences that are exclusive and inevitable results of vote buying from those that are

also associated with other electoral strategies or are only associated with particular vote

buying tactics.

Across its many incarnations, vote buying is difficult to combat. Demand-side voter

education campaigns, in particular, are rarely effective. These campaigns tend to assume

that people sell votes out of material need and fear, and in doing so unintentionally

patronize voters. The campaigns ignore voters’ feelings of friendship and obligation

toward brokers—who are often their neighbors or friends—and voters’ perceptions that

candidates distribute gifts out of generosity and kindness. Supply-side reforms are more

effective, although their track record is still decidedly mixed. In Taiwan, the government

adopted an aggressive strategy of prosecuting vote buyers that succeeded in curbing the

practice. In Thailand, however, a comprehensive set of constitutional reforms failed to

curb vote buying: some of the reform measures counteracted or diluted others, and

candidates excelled at adapting to new institutional constraints and obtaining additional

financial resources to continue to vote buying. The aggressive and nonpartisan

enforcement of electoral laws, in short, appears to be the best option for curbing vote

buying. While the diverse and multifaceted practice is unlikely to disappear entirely,

further research can at least help explain it.

Africa

12. Michael Bratton, “Formal versus Informal Institutions in Africa,” Journal of Democracy 18, no. 3 (July 2007), pp. 96–110.

Both formal and informal institutions shape political behavior. In consolidated

democracies with well-established rule of law, like the United States, Western Europe,

and Japan, formal institutions such as elections and limited government play a relatively

large role in shaping behavior. However, in emerging democracies like those in Africa,

these formal institutions coexist with neopatrimonial informal institutions: clientelism,

corruption, and “Big Man” presidentialism. Some scholars emphasize the importance of

formal institutions in African governance, while others believe they are overshadowed by

neopatrimonial patterns of behavior that coopt the formal state apparatus. In this article,

Michael Bratton uses data from a multinational Afrobarometer survey to examine the

relative power of formal and informal democratic institutions in Africa and to address the

question separating “formalists” from “informalists.”

Bratton finds that the influence of formal democratic institutions in African politics is

mixed. Africans generally prefer democracy to other forms of government. The great

success of democracy is that “regular, open elections are now an institutionalized feature

of African politics” (pg. 108) with widespread popular support. However, popular

attachment to the other formal institutions of democracy—multiple parties, strong

legislatures, and the rule of law—is weaker, and support for democracy has declined

marginally as the supply of good democratic governance remains lower than demand.

Given the shortage of strong formal institutions, Africans continue to depend heavily on

the quality of informal institutions: their trust in the president, access to patronage, and

freedom from corruption. Because “formal rules mandating accountability are

persistently weak, people turn to other standards for judging the extent of democratic

growth” (pg. 109) and determining how democratic their own countries actually are.

The article begins by surveying the conflict between formalists and informalists and

proposing the use of Afrobarometer data to empirically examine the relative role of

formal and informal institutions. The Afrobarometer, a comparative series of public

attitude surveys on democracy, governance, markets, and civil society conducted in three

rounds in 18 African countries, offers a means to evaluate three informal and five formal

institutions. It measures attitudes toward the informal institutions of clientelism,

corruption, and presidentialism by asking survey respondents whether citizens should

question or defer to authority, whether leaders should help their home community or treat

all citizens equally, how many legislators the respondents believe are involved in

corruption, and how much the respondents trust the president. The survey inquired about

the perceived extent of the formal institutions of free and fair elections, elections that

remove leaders, peaceful multiparty competition, representative legislatures, and

presidents’ subjection to the law. In addition, the survey inquired about general attitudes

towards and assessments of democracy.

The survey finds that the demand for democracy in Africa is notably higher than the

supply. In other words, citizens value democracy in the abstract but do not believe that

actual democratic governments are functioning adequately. Approximately 62 percent of

respondents in 2005 preferred democracy to military, one party, and one man rule.

However, the number dropped slightly from 69 percent in 1999. Less than 50 percent of

respondents indicated that they were satisfied with the level of democracy in their

country, and less than 50 percent of survey subjects in 2005 believed that any given

formal institution was actually present in their country. Evidence suggests that better

formal institutions can increase support for democracy: in Lesotho, the percentage of

respondents preferring democracy rose 10 percent following electoral reforms enacted

between 1999 and 2002.

After reviewing the attitudes demonstrated in the Afrobarometer survey, Bratton

discusses the factors that influence these attitudes. The demand for democracy is most

influenced by education, which has an impact three times greater than other factors. Men,

urbanites, Muslims, and the elderly are also more supportive of democracy. Bratton

hypothesizes that “Big Man” presidentialism and elections—one formal and one informal

institution—will have the largest impact on perceived supply of democracy, based on

previous research. A regression model of these two variables finds that elections (a

formal institution) are more significant than presidentialism (an informal institution).

However, a model that omits elections but considers all other formal and informal

institutions finds that presidentialism has by far the greatest impact, although all seven

factors were statistically significant. Bratton hypothesizes that the large role of informal

institutions is caused by the discrepancy between supply of and demand for democracy,

as “people will seek to make up for perceived institutional deficiencies by counting on

the informal ties characteristic of clientelism, corruption, and presidentialism” (pg. 107)

and will equate their assessment of these informal ties with their assessment of

democracy.

While elections may be a consolidated feature of African politics, citizens seem less

attached to other formal institutions: “the general idea of ‘rule by the people’ remains an

attractive prospect” (pg. 108) but Africans do not share a Western liberal concept of what

institutional arrangements constitute rule by the people. Because formal institutions for

accountability are weak and have failed to bring about rule by the people, Bratton

concludes that informal institutions heavily define African perceptions of democracy. In

some cases, he believes this definition can reinforce the legitimacy of a weak regime by

distributing clientelistic benefits. However, it also poses a danger of undermining

democracy when political elites retain the benefits of the state for themselves.

13. Staffan I. Lindberg and Minion K.C. Morrison, “Are African Voters Really Ethnic or Clientelistic? Survey Evidence from Ghana,” Political Science Quarterly 123, no. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 95–122.

Political scientists have frequently characterized newly democratic African states as

beset by ethnic and clientelistic voting behavior. To many scholars, this is an issue for

concern: democracy is less likely to produce effective policy outcomes if voters support

candidates because of personal ties (a “non-evaluative” rationale) rather than assessments

of performance and policy (an “evaluative” rationale). Few scholars, however, have

empirically examined voting behavior in the young democracies of Africa. In conducting

such as examination, Staffan I. Lindberg and Minion K.C. Morrison find far less

evidence of ethnic and clientelistic voting than the literature would predict. Between 10

and 15 percent of respondents in a survey of Ghanaian voters indicated that they had

supported a local parliamentary candidate based on non-evaluative rationales, but the vast

majority reported voting based on evaluative rationales typical of more mature

democracies, and particularly based on their assessments of parties rather than

candidates. Despite generally mature voting behavior, clientelistic voting is rising and is

more likely to occur in competitive electoral districts, suggesting that competitive

elections may expand clientelism.

Lindberg and Morrison discuss six rationales that Ghanaian voters might follow: four

evaluative and two non-evaluative. Because most African democracies are relatively

young, scholars have more extensively studied non-evaluative rationales compatible with

authoritarian rule: clientelism and proxy voting. Clientelism entails voting on “the

promise or supply of personal favors, patronage, service, or assistance, to oneself or to

close kin” (pg. 102) and proxy voting entails uncritically following the voting decision of

a family or ethnic leader. These contrast with the two-dimensional, fourfold typology of

evaluative voting behaviors that has emerged in the study of voting behavior elsewhere in

the world. Voters may base their decision on either a prospective evaluation of policy

pledges or a retrospective evaluation of performance, and on either the personal qualities

and commitments of a candidate or the programmatic pledges of a party. In reality, these

ideal-typical voting rationales are likely to interact with each other, with voters’

multilayered identities, and with electoral systems (in the case of Ghana, first-past-the-

post) to determine how ballots are cast.

Although no single rationale dominates Ghanaian voting behavior, evaluative

rationales do dominate non-evaluative ones. Based on a deliberately representative 2003

survey of Ghanaians that asked respondents about their voting rationales in the 1996 and

2000 elections, the authors conclude that most voters are not ethnic or clientelistic. In the

1996 elections, nearly half of all voters cast their ballot on the basis of a party mandate

(prospective voting for a party), approximately 90 percent used some evaluative

rationale, 4 percent voted based on clientelism, and 6 percent voted based on a proxy. In

the 2000 elections, as voters gained experience with the democratic system, rationales

shifted from party mandate to government accountability (retrospective voting for a

party), which were each responsible for 29 percent of voting decisions. Despite the first-

past-the-post electoral system, which tends to encourage close relationships between

constituents and legislators, voters more often based their decisions on parties than on

individual members of parliament, indicative of both voter maturity and the weakness of

legislators relative to the executive branch. Clientelism and proxy voting both increased:

5.5 percent voted based on clientelism and 8.3 percent voted based on proxy. In both

elections, there was little evidence of ethnic and tribal voting. Although respondents will

likely underreport clientelism and proxy voting, the authors’ field research experiences

suggested that underreporting was surprisingly minor.

While Lindberg and Morrison interpret the relatively low rates of clientelism and

proxy voting as positive signs for Ghanaian democracy, they note one concerning trend in

the data: democracy appears to increase clientelism. As voters gained more experience

with democratic political systems, clientelistic voting decisions increased. Furthermore,

these rationales were more common in districts that were highly competitive, reaching 12

percent in one hotly contested district. Although small as a proportion of the electorate,

clientelistic voters may be marginally important enough for politicians to pursue: if

elections are close and policy-oriented voters do not respond negatively to clientelism, it

is a rational strategy for candidates. This evidence supports a pessimistic hypothesis that

checks and balances, media and civil society, and voter accountability are insufficient to

balance out the incentives that elections create to purchase the support of poor voters.

The rise of clientelistic and ethnic voting, if it becomes a substantial feature of

Ghanaian politics, contradicts basic liberal democratic values. Clientelistic politicians are

likely to sacrifice the public interest and erode the “core institution…whereby the right of

the people to self-government can be exercised” (pg. 95). Not only does clientelism

undermine politicians’ vertical accountability to voters because clientelistic voters do not

critically dissect policies, it also undermines elites’ horizontal accountability to each

other. Politicians will trade favors with each other and prioritize patronage over

policymaking and oversight. The pressure to provide particularistic goods can lead to a

“vicious circle of increasing demands and patronage that in extension can undermine the

legitimacy of democratic elections” and discourage candidates “who do not have the

funds to sustain such campaigns, or who find the custom inconsistent with good

democratic practice” (pg. 120). If the results of the survey are generalizable to the rest of

Africa, as Lindberg and Morrison believe they are, young African democracies face a

bright but not uncomplicated future.

14. Pedro C. Vicente and Leonard Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Vote Buying: Lessons from Field Experiments in African Elections,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 25, no. 2 (2009), pp. 292–305.

African governments typically provide a suboptimal level of public goods to their

citizens. Instead of campaigning on and pursuing broad policies such as economic

growth, education, health care, and infrastructure development, politicians campaign on

and pursue particularistic policies such as bribes and the distribution of state offices.

Pedro C. Vicente and Leonard Wantchekon distinguish between two particularistic

strategies for winning an election: vote buying and clientelism. Vote buying entails

providing supporters with resources prior to the election (such as cash bribes), while

clientelism entails providing supporters with resources after the election (such as

government jobs). Although these behaviors are politically effective, they are unlikely to

be economically efficient and are often seen as a major reason for Africa’s

underdevelopment.

Pedro C. Vicente and Leonard Wantchekon study the causes and consequences of

vote buying and clientelism in Africa to understand how to better provide public goods.

The authors draw on field experiments they conducted in West Africa, a methodological

approach that can identify causality better than observational studies, such as surveys and

ethnographies, and that is more generalizable than lab experiments in controlled settings.

This methodology allows them to draw conclusions about cause and effect that are

applicable in a wide range of contexts. They find that clientelism is particularly effective

for incumbent candidates, while opposition candidates are relatively more successful in

buying votes and promising public goods. Incumbents have a significant advantage in

elections because clientelism is more effective at attracting support than vote buying.

Policymakers, however, can develop support for public goods by emphasizing civic

education campaigns that mitigate the effect of vote buying on actual voting behavior and

by encouraging participation among women, who are more supportive of public goods

provision.

Each coauthor conducted an independent experiment during a presidential election in

West Africa. Wantchekon examined the impact of a campaign platform on voting

behavior during the 2001 election in Benin. He approached four of the leading five

presidential candidates and convinced them to participate in a study that randomized the

campaign messages used in some villages in their stronghold districts (districts where the

candidate’s party gained at least 70 percent of the vote in previous elections). In a total of

eight districts, one village was targeted using a public goods campaign while another was

targeted using a clientelistic campaign. To measure the relationship between campaign

message and voting behavior, Wantchekon conducted a survey after the election to

collect demographic and voting data.

Vicente examined the impact of voter education on voting behavior during the 2006

election in Sao Tome and Principe. With the cooperation of the Sao Tomean Electoral

Commission, the researchers distributed leaflets telling voters not to base their voting

decisions on payments from candidates in 40 census areas and studied the impact of the

leaflets on vote buying. Like Wantchekon, Vicente used a survey to collect demographic

and voting information, but he also used official election results as a secondary outcome

measure.

The authors find that clientelism is an effective tool for mobilizing support,

particularly for incumbents, but that policymakers can also effectively change voting

behavior and encourage campaigns based on the provision of public goods. Because only

the winning candidate can provide clientelistic benefits, voters who are promised benefits

have an incentive to vote for the candidate who offers benefits in order to secure these

benefits. In contrast, vote buying contains no enforcement mechanism (voters are not

required to support the candidate who bribes them). The research by Vicente shows that

civic education can diminish the impact of vote buying on actual voting behavior: vote

buying was more effective at increasing turnout than increasing support, as voters

accepted gifts but “voted in conscience.” Wantchekon finds that incumbents benefit most

from clientelistic appeals. Their commitments are more credible than their challengers,’

as they have a demonstrated record of providing benefits. Challengers have a

comparative advantage in vote buying and public goods appeals, although they face an

electoral disadvantage because vote buying is less effective at attracting supporters.

Women, co-ethnics of the candidates, and those with access to information were more

likely to value public goods, and civic education campaigns were particularly effective

among poor and uneducated voters with little prior access to information. Despite the

power of clientelistic and vote buying appeals, the experiments found that those appeals

are not universal or unalterable.

Vicente and Wantchekon conclude the article by discussing ways to encourage

campaigning that focuses on public rather particularistic goods, as well as reviewing

avenues for further research. Because incumbents enjoy an advantage based on their

control of existing resources, electoral systems should limit the power of incumbents with

term limits, public financing, and independent electoral commissions. Foreign donors can

incentivize accountability by making development aid contingent on local political

reforms. Education, media coverage, and the enfranchisement of women can also play a

great role in reducing the power of clientelism and vote buying, although the authors note

that further experimental research is needed in these avenues in order to explain what

specific features of a civic education campaign are effective and explore how female

participation in politics can be increased.

15. Nicolas van de Walle, “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss? The Evolution of Political Clientelism in Africa,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pg. 50–67.

The forms that clientelism takes across the world are shaped by countries’ political,

social, and economic characteristics. In postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa, pervasive

clientelism has historically been defined by three principle factors: poverty,

authoritarianism, and ethnic divisions. Because states and parties had few resources, little

capacity to distribute goods or monitor voters, and no need to mobilize voters, African

clientelism prior to democratization in the 1990s did not entail mass patronage. Instead, it

entailed the use of “prebendalism” that gave elites personal access to state offices and

resources—prebends—to facilitate accommodation between various elite factions.

Symbolic ties of kinship and ethnicity constituted a more important relationship between

elites and masses than material ties of clientelism. Many of these patterns have continued

into the democratic era: programmatic politics are rare, ethnicity is the greatest

determinant of political loyalty, and most countries in the region are dominated by

prebendalism. However, a small number of effectively liberalizing African democracies

appear to be transitioning from prebendal clientelism to patronage clientelism, which

involves stronger parties and greater rule of law.

Following René Lemarchand, Nicolas van de Walle distinguishes between three types

of clientelism. Patronage, the most frequently discussed form, involves distributing state

resources such as jobs or food to clients in exchange for political support. It is legally

ambiguous, usually operates through political parties, and is frequently deployed in mass

electoral politics. Tribute, the second kind of clientelism, is a traditional gift exchange

that builds bonds of reciprocity and trust. While frequently invoked by clientelistic

African leaders, it rarely occurs in modern society. Prebendalism, the third type of

clientelism, involves the capture of state office and resources for the personal (rather than

political) gain of leaders. It characterizes most early societies, usually operates through

authoritarian executives, and is unambiguously at odds with the rule of law and

professional administration. Giving a coethnic a job in a customs office, for example,

would be patronage, while allowing a customs officer to skim profits off import duties

would be prebendalism.

Between independence and democratization in the 1990s, the structure of African

states encouraged prebendalism in three ways. First, state institutions at the time of

independence were extremely weak. National governments competed with ethnic and

tribal sources of authority, lacked the infrastructure to deliver services and promote

national integration, and could not penetrate into rural hinterlands. Political parties were

young and, without the rallying cry of independence, lacked the ability to independently

mobilize voters. Instead, they recruited traditional local elites as clientelistic brokers

between the central state and the hinterland. Second, elections were not well-

institutionalized in the newly independent African states. Parties did not need to broadly

distribute patronage in order to obtain support at the polls, because they could simply

bypass elections altogether and seize power by force. Third, states were extremely poor

and underdeveloped. Governments had an extremely limited amount of resources to

distribute. Given these three factors, clientelism was mostly “a mechanism for

accommodation and integration of a fairly narrow political elite rather than a logic of

mass party patronage” and “the stronger link between political elites and the citizenry is

through the less tangible bonds of ethnic identity” (pg. 66). To pacify divides between

elites from different ethnic groups, generational and educational backgrounds, and

institutions (the state, military, church, and unions), executives built broad coalitions by

distributing powerful government posts and tolerating corruption. Civil services remained

relatively small, mass patronage was limited, development spending and tax revenues

were often siphoned off into private accounts, and political parties remained relatively

weak. The state was effectively under the private, prebendal control of a small group of

elites.

The emergence of democracy in Africa has not caused a mass shift from clientelistic

to programmatic politics. Many countries in the region, despite holding regular elections,

are still only nominally or partially democratic and do not effectively protect the rights of

their citizens, and continue to demonstrate prebendal patterns of clientelism. In most

cases, parties remain weak and personalized, with a single dominant party surrounded by

small, transient parties. Politicians seek prebends by joining the ruling party or forming a

small, personalized coalition partner rather than pursuing policy goals by coalescing into

a strong, cohesive opposition party. Although programmatic parties enjoy little success,

vote buying is limited. Voters’ widespread belief that politicians from another ethnic

group, region, or religion will not treat them fairly is not always founded. Parties have

little incentive to favor their ethnic bases because these bases are unlikely to defect. In

some party systems, such as in the Ivory Coast, parties in the democratic era have

become more willing to exclude certain groups from the winning coalition in order to

maintain discipline and distribute elite prebends among a smaller circle. To the average

voter, however, the costs and benefits of clientelism are mostly indirect: an ethnic leader

might lose a ministerial appointment or win a prestigious ambassadorship, but his

followers are unlikely to lose or win in material terms.

Clientelism shows no signs of declining throughout the continent, but patronage does

appear to be replacing prebends in the continent’s more consolidated democratic regimes.

In a small number of liberalizing democracies, the rule of law is encouraging a shift to

more legally acceptable forms of clientelism, free media is exposing corrupt practices,

and fair elections are pressuring politicians to be responsive. In countries like Mauritius

and Botswana, where democracy preceded the 1990s, party patronage and the

politicization of the civil service are widespread but prebends are severely restricted.

However, outsider parties—even in these countries—are unable to mount challenges to

incumbents based on policy issues. When given a choice between a programmatic and

clientelistic party, voters are likely to support the clientelistic party, because a winning

clientelistic party, unlike a winning programmatic party, will retaliate against groups that

did not support it. Despite the limited shift away from prebendalism, programmatic

politics are still rare in Africa and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

16. Nicolas van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems,” Journal of Modern African Studies 42, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 297–321.

Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa are at least nominally multiparty democracies.

Between 1989 and 2000, the region held 87 competitive legislative elections and 65

competitive presidential elections and experienced “the routinisation of multiparty

elections” (pg. 299) for the first time in its history. Although few African states can be

considered genuine liberal democracies, democratization has created meaningful

opposition parties and distinct, functional party systems across most of the region. Using

a database of African elections in the 1990s, Nicolas van de Walle highlights patterns in

African party systems: the continued dominance of parties that won control in the first

competitive elections, the fragmentation and volatility of parties other than the ruling

party, and the ethnic and regional cleavages that divide parties. These trends are driven

by the deeply flawed enforcement of political rights and civil liberties, the intense

personalization of power around the president, and pervasive clientelism that casts

politicians as representatives of ethnic interests rather than policies. Politicians have no

need for programmatic interest aggregation and therefore no need for well-

institutionalized parties: they can most easily obtain state resources by trading the support

of their community to powerful presidents who control government and broker patronage.

Three trends distinguish the multiparty systems of contemporary African

democracies. First, the initial round of democratic elections largely determines which

party is still in power. Without long histories, control of state resources has proven vital

to building stable party institutions that can mobilize voters. Winners of the first

competitive elections, given access to patronage, have subsequently lost control in only

two countries, while parties that have failed to gain control are usually short-lived and

plagued by defections. Because of their better-developed institutions and ability to deploy

state resources in the initial round of elections, former authoritarian parties have enjoyed

continuing success, retaining control in fifteen countries and acting as the principal

opposition force in eight of the eleven countries in which they lost power. Because state

resources are necessary to develop effective parties, a second trend characterizes African

party systems: legislatures are usually characterized by a large number of highly

fragmented parties and a single, dominant leading party. Although the average effective

number of parties is decreasing, fragmented party systems persist in relatively mature

democracies, as proportional representation systems reduce but do not eliminate the

dominance of a leading party. Third, political parties are rarely distinguished by their

ideology. Programmatic parties have been far less successful than those that “adopted a

vague populism during elections, and pitch their campaigns around their opposition to

corruption, services for the population and general, if vague, promises for a better future”

(pg. 304) without discussing policy issues. Successful campaigns depend on personalistic

and ethnic appeals, and parties rarely distinguish themselves on policy programs even

when these programs benefit a particular ethnic group, such as adopting pro-business

platforms that benefit tribes extensively involved in commerce. Finally, although

democracy has politicized ethnicity, this has rarely led to irreconcilable ethnic conflict

and the breakdown of democracy.

Electoral democracy has not lead to genuine liberalism in most of Africa, but it has

lead to some partial liberalization. Governments frequently use their incumbency

advantage to bias elections and abridge freedom of the press, ostensibly independent

judiciaries are poorly trained and overworked, and powerful political figures possess de

facto legal immunity. However, van de Walle sees signs for optimism: where democratic

transitions were genuine and lead to a change in power rather that “an erstwhile

authoritarian ruler donning the garb of democracy” (pg. 307), democratic gains have been

meaningful, and even many de facto authoritarian regimes have become less abusive.

Countries that have developed high-quality liberal democracy frequently eschew the

pattern of single party dominance in favor of a highly competitive, fragmented party

system, although fragmentation is not without its dangers. Politically fragmented

democracies that have failed to consolidate have often been plagued by coups.

Parties are weakened by pervasive presidentialism and clientelism. All but four of

Africa’s forty-five electoral democracies are presidential systems, and, in most,

“legislative elections are a sideshow” (pg. 310) to competition for the powerful and

personalistic top office of president. Local governments, legislators, and even national

ministers have few resources at their disposal, while the president’s office personally

controls a large proportion of the national budget and can act with impunity to distribute

patronage. In the hands of the president, clientelism becomes “a mechanism for

accommodation and integration of a fairly narrow political elite” (pg. 313) across ethnic

groups, educational and generational gaps, and government, military, and church

institutions. This political elite provides symbolic representation and community goods

such as infrastructure development to ethnic constituencies in exchange for votes.

Because the poverty and institutional weakness of African states prevent the president

and political parties from directly distributing patronage to a large proportion of the

electorate, this inter-elite accommodation is the key to continuing political control.

The combination of presidentialism and clientelism encourages politicians to strike

personal accommodations with the president, rather than coalesce into strong,

independent, and well-institutionalized parties. Voters are more interested in obtaining

club goods and symbolic inclusion than effective representation on policy issues, and

politicians need the loyalty of ethnic constituencies so they can trade support for personal

access to state resources. Politicians can maximize their returns by either joining the

president’s party or starting a small, flexible party that can be leveraged in post-election

coalition building and then discarded. In contrast with the historical European experience,

“parties do not really serve to aggregate interests – rather they serve a representation

function” (pg. 314) where “the political system conceives of elected office largely in

terms of the access to the state resources that it confers” (pg. 315). Although it is possible

that some parties will eventually seek a comparative advantage in making aggressive

programmatic appeals, van de Walle is pessimistic. As long as some parties adopt

clientelistic ethnic appeals, voters face a heavy cost if they support a programmatic party

but a clientelist one wins. If this is the case, African politics will continue to be

dominated by illiberal democracy and weak parties—an imperfect improvement from the

past—for the foreseeable future.

Asia

17. Anirudh Krishna, “Politics in the Middle: Mediating Relationships between the Citizens and the State in Rural North India,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 141–158.

In rural northern India, traditional political linkages are being challenged by an

emerging new class of political entrepreneurs. The relationship between villagers and the

state has historically been mediated by clientelistic rural elites through caste associations

and landlords. Over the past twenty-five years, however, changes in the Indian state have

encouraged the proliferation of new leaders, or naya netas. These naya netas derive their

authority from entrepreneurial political skills rather than formal posts, economic power,

or caste status. They are better educated, better informed, and better able to interact with

the state apparatus and deliver benefits to supporters than traditional elites. With rising

levels of education, the expansion of the state in rural areas, and increasing party

competition, the government and political parties depend on naya netas to implement

policies and attract political support. They have become the primary intermediaries

between citizens and government in villages in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states.

Although the relationship between leaders and followers is still based on the exchange of

material benefits for political support, it is far less hierarchical and authoritarian than

traditional forms of patronage and provides citizens with deeper democracy and increased

economic opportunity.

The role of mediator between state and citizen is often filled by political parties.

However, Indian parties are incapable of fulfilling this role directly because state and

party institutions do not penetrate the village level. Instead, politicians rely upon existing

social structures for interest articulation, mobilization, and policy implementation. During

interviews in 69 villages located in two northern Indian states, Anirudh Krishna found

that naya netas were overwhelmingly villagers’ preferred means of interacting with the

state: 60 percent of respondents indicated a preference for naya netas, while no more than

20 percent indicated a preference for any other intermediary (party officials, traditional

patrons, elected council leaders, and caste leaders). Compared with traditional elites, they

are younger, members of lower castes, and have fewer land holdings, but they are also

better educated, better connected, and better informed. Three-quarters of the naya netas

are from formerly untouchable castes, but they are on average a decade and a half

younger and possess six more years of education. These characteristics enable them to

understand and interact with the state bureaucracy more effectively than traditional elites

can and to help citizens obtain benefits from the state. In particular, they can best provide

economic development, which respondents overwhelming consider their highest priority

from the political system.

Three factors are behind the rise of these new entrepreneurs capable of navigating the

rules of government in rural India. First, improvements in the Indian education system

have empowered poor and low caste citizens. Literacy rates have increased dramatically:

72 percent of lower-caste villagers aged 18 to 25 are functionally literate, compared with

6 percent of those above age 55. As a result, more people are capable of unmediated and

independent access to the state bureaucracy, increasing the potential supply of naya

netas. Education also gives younger leaders an advantage when coming into conflict with

older leaders, because they are able to utilize formal channels of government to their

advantage. Meanwhile, the state has expanded rapidly in rural areas. Between 1980 and

1995, government funding for rural development increased sevenfold. Because the

capacity of state and party institutions in rural areas is weak, government officials

“unofficially, but quite centrally” (pg. 152) rely on village leaders to implement programs

such as small-scale public works and family planning initiatives and to fairly distribute

state employment opportunities that come from these programs. Educated young villagers

—the naya netas—are ideal program leaders because they can keep records, can devote

time to the project without the distraction of other responsibilities, and are highly capable

of interacting with bureaucrats. Third, increasing party competition has forced parties to

go to increasing lengths to attract supporters. Because naya netas attract significant local

support from villagers in exchange for help addressing political problems, they are

courted by politicians who trade development projects for political support. In

combination, these three factors make the support of naya netas appealing for both

villagers and politicians.

The role of the naya neta is undoubtedly clientelistic. As intermediaries between

politicians and voters, they trade personalistic benefits for votes. However, naya netas

provide a more egalitarian and democratic relationship than traditional intermediaries do.

Unlike in traditional clientelistic relationship, villagers can usually choose between

multiple brokers to follow, and brokers can choose from among multiple political parties

to support. The competition for support ensures that brokers and political parties work

honestly and effectively for the welfare of citizens in order to retain support. Naya netas

deepen democracy by increasing both participation (of traditionally parochial groups) and

contestation (between parties and between patrons). However, for all their virtues, they

are essentially a stopgap measure. Better brokers do not “constitute a sustainable solution

to the vacuum of upward representation that separates villagers from the Indian state”

(pg. 157) and continue villagers’ reliance on individuals over institutions. Because the

internal politics of Indian parties are rarely democratic, it is unlikely that naya netas can

coalesce into a formal party apparatus. Naya netas provide a benign form of clientelism

that can strengthen democracy, but they are no substitute for programmatic, party-based

linkages that eventually must take hold.

18. Bruce Kam-Kwan Kwong, “Patron-Client Politics in Hong Kong: A Case Study of the 2002 and 2005 Chief Executive Elections,” Journal of Contemporary China 16, no. 52 (August 2007), pp. 389–415.

Clientelism dominates the selection of the Hong Kong Chief Executive. The Chief

Executive, created in 1997 to replace the British Governor, is nominated and selected

through a “small circle” election by political elites, most of whom represent economic

sectors such as finance, higher education, textiles, and agriculture. Traditional Chinese

political culture encourages the use of intra-elite personal connections for political ends.

As a result, candidates can develop personal relationships with electors, monitor electors’

public nominations, and trade state offices, government resources, and public recognition

for political support. The first two Chief Executives have both expanded their supply of

patronage resources by cultivating a close relationship with the Beijing government and

its local loyalists. By deploying these resources, they have been able to secure

overwhelming support from the elite electorate and, since the initial round of elections,

preempt the nomination of competing candidates. In exchange, the mainland government

is able to exercise control over Hong Kong politics without violating the region’s formal

autonomy. However, while clientelistic politics remains strong, the absolute dominance

of the loyalist faction is eroding in the face of better-organized democratic opposition.

The combination of political institutions and cultural practices in Hong Kong are

highly conducive to clientelistic politics. The tiered electoral system used for selecting

the Chief Executive encourages candidates to make personalized, clientelistic bargains in

addition to generalized, programmatic pledges. The Executive is selected by a 400-voter

committee (in 1996) or an 800-voter committee (since 2002). Although the committee’s

exact composition varies, it is comprised mostly of representatives elected by

professional and business organizations but also includes a small number of

representatives from geographic constituencies and religious groups, Hong Kong

delegates to mainland political bodies, and the members of the Hong Kong Legislative

Council. Electors must publicly support the nomination of a single candidate, but they

cast their final votes secretly. Candidates with more than 100 public nominations are

included in the final secret ballot. While the Chief Executive cannot monitor the final

vote, he can monitor the nomination process and reward or punish electors accordingly.

The instrumental use of guanxi (friendship) and the involvement of ren-ch’ing (personal

relations) in politics—rewarding and punishing electors—is generally an accepted

practice and has expanded with the advent of greater political competition since

retrocession. As such, clientelism is both an institutionally viable and a culturally

acceptable tactic.

Electors who support the winning candidate expect to receive political rewards. A

survey of the Election Committee members in 2002 found that most expected to obtain

particularistic benefits for their constituencies in exchange for political support: 80

percent thought that the executive should be especially responsive to their personal

problems and sectoral interests, and a plurality of 41 percent expected more resources for

their sectors. Smaller segments of the committee were more personalistic: 8 percent

nominated Tung Chee-hwa (the winning candidate) because they were asked by a friend,

12 percent did so because it would be helpful to their career, 6 percent hoped for an

appointment to a government consultative committee, and 6 percent supported appointing

electors to government or advisory positions. Tung targeted four groups of particularly

critical electors with these more extensive benefits: personal friends and allies, backers of

his initial rise to power, influential Beijing supporters in Hong Kong, and potential

opponents who could be coopted with patronage. They received access to public

resources, receptions and awards, prestigious government jobs, and positions on

consultative committees and mainland political bodies. Appointments to consultative

committees, heightened social status, and prestigious government awards were the most

valued benefits for building political support.

In all three rounds of executive elections in Hong Kong, the small-circle electoral

system and the “prevailing elite political culture that stressed guanxi and ren-ch’ing” (pg.

399) have inhibited real competition. Tung Chee-hwa was able to win the initial election

in 1996 because he built strong patron-client relationships with electors and members of

the Preparatory Committee that organized the transition from British to Chinese rule.

This network included important Hong Kong businesspeople, prominent Beijing

supporters, and members of the mainland political structure, including his “ultimate

patron” (pg. 413), Chinese President Jiang Zemin. For the mainland government,

patronage was “an effective, legitimate but hidden means of control” (pg. 414) that

bypasses popular mistrust and formal political autonomy by utilizing the mainland’s

cultural and business ties to Hong Kong. By the 2002 elections, support for opposition

candidates had withered away as the pro-Beijing patronage network solidified. The

opposition was unable to obtain enough public support from Election Committee

members to nominate a rival candidate for Chief Executive, even though public approval

for the Tung government was low. After Tung resigned in 2005, his successor, Donald

Tsang, likewise did not face any opposing nominees. Tsang had weaker ties to Beijing

loyalists, and encountered initial skepticism because he was a civil servant in the British

colonial regime. However, he was able to win widespread support by attracting the

backing of Hu Jintao and the Beijing government and continuing benefits for key electors

and constituencies.

Although clientelism remains important, the power of the incumbent Chief Executive

seems to be fading. The democratic opposition has become politically savvy and

strategically sophisticated: they now control 134 seats in the Election Committee, with

strong support from the legal, education, and university sectors, and plan to nominate a

well-respected and moderate lawyer named Alan Leong Kah Kit to run against Tsang in

2007. Unless Tsang can coopt a large number of opposition and independent electors, the

democrats have the 100 nominations necessary to hold a competitive election with secret

ballots. Furthermore, support for Donald Tsang has eroded, as he has failed to build up

good personal relations with Beijing loyalists in Hong Kong and has been criticized by

the Beijing government for allowing the opposition to gain strength. Given popular

mistrust and formal autonomy, Beijing relies upon clientelism to influence Hong Kong

politics and has attempted to expand the reach of guanxi and ren-ch’ing. However, given

Hong Kong’s long tradition of pluralism, hegemonic clientelism appears unsustainable.

19. Emmanuel Teitelbaum and Tariqu Thachil, “Party Fragmentation and the Emergence of Programmatic Spending in the Indian States,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failures,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

In developing democracies, the relationship between citizens and politicians is often

characterized by hierarchical, clientelistic ties. In exchange for electoral support,

politicians provide impoverished voters with excludable state resources. This pattern has

traditionally dominated politics even in India, a successful and relatively stable

developing democracy. However, according to Teitelbaum and Thachil, greater voter

enfranchisement and changing party structures in recent decades have begun a transition

away from clientelism and towards programmatic, participatory politics that emphasize

voter autonomy and the provision of public goods. This has occurred as the traditional

dominance of the Indian National Congress party and upper-caste elites has eroded with

the rise of lower-caste political parties. The emergence of caste-based parties has

increased party system fragmentation and, under India’s first-past-the-post electoral rules,

allows politicians to win elections with a relatively small plurality of votes. A study of

formal institutions would suggest that this increases clientelism, because politicians can

win office by targeting a narrow constituency with clientelistic benefits. The opposite has

actually occurred: the growth of autonomous lower-caste parties has given new-found

autonomy to voters who were previously “encapsulated” into blocs controlled by local

elites. As such, this expansion has forced politicians to appeal to a broad swath of lower-

class voters by providing public goods. Under the socioeconomic conditions that exist in

India, increasing party fragmentation along social cleavages can effectively combat

clientelism and encourage spending on broad social goods like education and healthcare.

Scholars have frequently noted India’s increasing cleavage and fragmentation along

caste lines, but they have drawn contrasting conclusions about these trends. Great

political advancements have been made by the Other Backwards Classes (OBCs), a social

group mostly comprised of the low castes immediately above untouchables and

indigenous tribal communities in the Indian social hierarchy. In the early years of

independence, OBCs’ votes were largely controlled or “encapsulated” by local upper-

caste elites with close ties to the Congress party. OBCs began mobilizing politically in

1960s and 1970s and formed regionally significant political parties by the 1990s,

increasing the fragmentation of the Indian party system and challenging the Congress

party’s traditional dominance. Some scholars have argued that this party fragmentation

caused a decrease in spending on public goods, because fragmentation allows politicians

to win office with the support of a relatively small segment of the population by targeting

clientelistic benefits to a narrow constituency in a first-past-the-post electoral system.

Although formal institutional rules should connect increasing fragmentation with

clientelism, Teitelbaum and Thachil argue that increased fragmentation has actually

decreased clientelism and increased public goods spending in the Indian states. The

broader social trend behind increasing fragmentation—enfranchisement of OBCs—

means that “since political elites in multiparty systems are less able to effectively capture

lower caste votes through traditional clientelist structures, it has become preferable for

them to begin providing public goods to the broad selectorate” (pg. 16). Furthermore, the

relatively poor OBCs have greater need for public services like education and healthcare,

because they cannot afford to purchase these services privately. As such, states with

greater party fragmentation and higher OBC representation should demonstrate three

testable qualities. First, OBC representation should correlate positively with party

fragmentation. Second, party fragmentation should correlate positively with spending on

difficult-to-target social services like education and healthcare, and negatively with

spending on easy-to-target economic services like irrigation and energy. Third, OBC

representation should correlate positively with spending on public goods. As a secondary

measure, the authors also consider literacy rates to assess whether caste-driven party

formation has caused a measurable gap in policy outputs.

Controlling for wealth, ideology, election years, and population, the authors find

strong statistical evidence that the political clout of the OBCs does cause increased rates

of spending on public goods, because it increases party fragmentation. Political

participation of OBCs has a significant and substantial effect on party fragmentation: a

one percent increase in OBC representation leads to a .045 increase in the Effective

Number of Parties by Votes (ENPV) or a .027 increase in the Effective Number of Parties

by Seats (ENPS) and on the levels of education spending. ENPV and ENPS, in turn, are

correlated with increased spending on social services, decreased spending on economic

services, and higher literacy rates. Among the control variables, population was

positively correlated with spending on social services across most of the models, as it is

more difficult to win elections through targeted distribution of benefits when a larger

population increases the size of the selectorate. The combination of these results suggests

that party fragmentation is at least one of the key mechanisms by which the increased

participation of OBCs has led to increased spending on social services.

In contrast to many other scholars, Teitelbaum and Thachil conclude that politicized

ethnicity can, in fact, benefit democracy and good governance. Parties that represent

traditionally marginalized groups transform suffrage into genuine enfranchisement and

shift states away from clientelistic policies based on encapsulation towards programmatic

policies based on the notion of citizenship. The authors suggest that the political

representation of minorities, which appears to strengthen democracy in India, should be

held analytically distinct from ethnic fragmentation. Given ethnic pluralism, “the

increased political salience of ethnic identity…[does] not serve to fracture

communities…but instead weakens relations of local dominance that prevent

marginalized populations from having their demands met” (pg. 30). In divided

developing societies like India, where “rigid clientelist structures that enable a small

group of elites to dominate a heterogeneous society have been the hallmark of political

incorporation” (pg. 31), parties that mirror these social structures and increase

fragmentation can lead towards a more representative and more effective government.

20. Steven I. Wilkinson, “Explaining Changing Patterns of Party-Voter Linkages in India,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 110–140.

Clientelism in modern India has evolved through three distinct eras. Following

independence, the dominant Congress Party initially maintained the same modest levels

of clientelism that existed under the British Raj. Because Congress faced little

competition and poor, rural voters had low expectations from government, politicians did

not need to provide widespread patronage to attract support. Instead, Congress made

alliances with upper-caste local elites who influenced or controlled the voting decisions

of villagers. However, as Congress’s hegemony eroded in the late 1960s, politicians

sought electoral advantage by courting poor voters with patronage. The state and federal

governments competed with each other to provide clientelistic benefits to core party

supporters and key marginal voters through economically ineffective but politically

useful development programs. Now, with increasing economic development, Wilkinson

believes that India is entering a new era of declining clientelism, as constituencies emerge

to advocate for programmatic reform and the state struggles to fulfill growing clientelistic

demands in the face of large budget deficits.

From 1950 until 1967, the dominant Congress Party faced few electoral threats and

had no incentive to extend either clientelistic or programmatic benefits to the parochial

population. Voters did not demand benefits because “low levels of education and literacy

in rural India, and experience with a colonial state that had done little in terms of

development in most rural areas, had created very low expectations of government

among most rural voters” (pg. 112). Instead of building linkages with these voters,

Congress “contracted for votes” (pg. 113) with upper-caste local elites who possessed

social status, martial strength, and economic resources. Local elites relied on norms of

reciprocity, villagers’ ignorance, and the threat of force to manipulate voting behavior.

They reinforced villagers’ beliefs that only a representative from the ruling Congress

Party could provide benefits for the village and that the ruling party was responsible for

providing government services. Villagers were also motivated to vote for Congress

candidates because of their belief, whether true or false, that local elites could monitor

ballots and would punish anyone who voted for the opposition. When politicians or elites

did distribute gifts, they were trivial in value and less influential than citizens’ political

beliefs and patrons’ power.

When the Congress Party began facing serious threats to its power in 1967, levels of

clientelism increased as parties competed for votes by offering expansive patronage

benefits. That year, after a split within the Congress party and the electoral success of

opposition parties in eight of fourteen state elections, candidates realized that “the very

low-costs gifts or threats of retaliation that had been used in the past” (pg. 115) would

merely drive voters away—candidates had to spend lavishly on voters to be seriously

considered by them. The federal and state governments, often controlled by opposing

parties or factions, sought to outbid each other in distributing patronage. In the early

1970s, Indira Ghandi sought to build loyalty to her faction of Congress by creating

Centrally Sponsored Schemes, development programs that targeted narrow electoral

constituencies in rural areas, and by nationalizing and politicizing banks and insurance

companies. In response, state parties developed their own programs, undermining the

long-term effects of the Centrally Sponsored schemes. When the national government

mandated the creation of panchayati raj institutions (village-level political bodies) in the

1990s, members of state legislative assemblies coopted them by becoming involved in

administration and funding. Both federal and then state legislators have created Local

Area Development Schemes that give them personal discretionary budgets to fund

development projects. Most of these projects, despite their proclaimed purpose, have

been far more effective at winning electoral support than actually promoting development

Politicians use diverse tactics to build clientelistic linkages. At the local level, direct

vote buying is common because politicians have little control over development

spending. In villages in Karnataka state, alcohol, cash, and food were frequently used to

sway votes. Local politicians also advertise connections to the MLAs (Members of

Legislative Assemblies) and MPs (Members of Parliament) who control development

spending. MLAs and MPs themselves generally campaign on past performance and the

distribution of patronage to key constituencies instead of mass vote buying. Legislators

distribute development spending, educational opportunities, and jobs to core supporters

and to vital marginal constituencies who can sway the balance of the election, while

minimizing their expenditures on other groups. Preelectoral spending typically targets

impatient, uncommitted marginal constituencies, while postelectoral spending rewards

loyalists for their good behavior. Spending subsides between elections. Legislators’

patronage tends to be biased against lower castes, both because of prejudice and because

lower caste voters are less influential.

The pattern of increasing patronage in recent decades may be reversing itself. As

incomes rise in India, reform constituencies are pressuring the state to curb patronage and

increasing clientelistic demands are putting the state under stress. The growth of the

private sector following India’s 1991 economic reforms has reduced citizens’ dependence

on state spending and created upper-class and business constituencies that favor efficient,

programmatic government. Citizens’ access to information about corruption and

clientelism is expanding due to higher literacy rates, developing media, and freedom of

information laws. International donor organizations, domestic NGOs, and government

offices have increasingly turned their eye toward issues of good governance, and public

opinion polls show that corruption is an increasing concern among Indian voters. As

changing public opinion reduces the demand for clientelism, economic pressures are

reducing the supply of clientelism. Government subsidies are over 14 percent of India’s

gross domestic product, and many states have run unsustainably large budget deficits that

increase production costs and interests rates. The continuation of large yet ineffective

clientelistic transfers presents severe economic dangers. In states with relatively high

literacy rates, large domestic products, and healthy media, such as Punjab, Kerala,

Gujarat, and Maharashtra, reform appears likely as long as these dual pressures of supply

and demand exceed the temptation for politicians to re-regulate the private sector.

Latin America

21. Javier Auyero, “The Logic of Clientelism in Argentina: An Ethnographic Account,” Latin American Research Review 35, no. 3 (2000), pp. 55–81.

Although the literature on clientelism is fairly large, it has not extensively explored

the operation of clientelistic networks at the grassroots level. Instead, it usually describes

relationships between political elites and mass voters as social classes without critically

examining the popular image of clientelism: poor voters who trade their votes for

material benefits in order to survive. Clientelism is not understood “through its least

known and least spectacular side: the everyday dealings of political brokers, the practices

and perspectives of so-called clients, and the problem-solving networks that links

‘clients,’ brokers, and political patrons” (pg. 58). To develop this understanding, Javier

Auyero provides an ethnographic account of a clientelistic political network in a slum

outside Buenos Aires. He finds that the network of relationships between Peronist party

workers and residents constitutes an important part of the problem-solving network used

to help residents depend on in the face of widespread material deprivation. The

relationship between brokers and residents is not an egalitarian relationship. Instead it is a

“domination network” that attempts to monopolize resources and information in order to

make residents dependent upon the brokers. However, clientelism is not the sole factor in

the continued support for Peronism among the Argentine poor: clientelistic networks in

the slums of Argentina are limited in reach and are not universally respected.

In an attempt to survive amid the desperate living conditions of the Argentine slums,

poor people often turn to political brokers working for the Argentine Peronist party.

These brokers operate local party offices known as Unidad Basicas, from which they

distribute food and medicine provided by state welfare programs and help residents

obtain state resources such as jobs and pensions. Although Peronism has long drawn its

support from the poor, Auyero suggests that their dependence upon Peronist brokers has

increased as state structural adjustment policies, declining job security, and stagnating

demand for unskilled labor cause “widespread material deprivation, persistent joblessness

and misery, and unmerciful economic pressure” (pg. 60). Without enough community

income to provide a horizontal support system among poor people, traditional reciprocal

networks based on family and friendship have begun to overlap with Peronist political

networks that can provide resources. As such, brokers come to play an increasingly

central role in life in the slums.

Peronist brokers operate as gatekeepers, mediating the flow of resources, information,

and votes between supporters in the slums and politicians. Municipal leaders distribute

food and medicine to the Unidades Basicas for brokers to give out as they see fit. These

leaders also ensure that brokers are supplied with scarce information, such as knowledge

of the procedures residents must follow to obtain food at a monthly giveaway held at the

municipal building. Brokers attempt to monopolize both information and material

resources and occasionally spread confusion and misinformation in order to retain this

problem-solving monopoly within the slum. As other channels of assistance disintegrate,

residents in need become dependent on the Peronist network. While most of the brokers’

followers interact with the brokers only when they need a problem solved and reciprocate

by voting for the broker and appearing at rallies, successful brokers also retain an inner

circle of followers bound to the broker “through strong ties of long-lasting friendship,

parentage, or fictive kinship” (pg. 64). The inner circle interacts with the broker on a

weekly basis, often begins their relationship with a major, foundational favor, and is

partially motivated by the hope of receiving more valuable forms of patronage such as

city jobs.

Attitudes towards these brokers—and towards politics in general—are decisively

split. Many in the slum see brokers as corrupt bosses who manipulate people for their

own benefit and keep scant resources for themselves. However, those who frequently rely

on brokers as problem solvers hold a different opinion: they admire the brokers as caring

and self-sacrificing. These residents do not see brokers as agents inserting themselves

between residents and state entitlements, but rather as principals who distribute benefits

out of their own goodwill. The power of the brokers is personalized: “the organization

that grants a pension, offers a job, or gives out medicine or a food package is not the

local, provincial, or national government but Matilda or Juan” (pg. 71). Benefits are not a

right whose denial can be appealed to a third party, but a gift that creates an unspoken

obligation for recipients to demonstrate loyalty. Residents see themselves as removed

from the realm of politics: elections are primarily an opportunity for obtaining more state

resources from brokers, not an opportunity for changing policy.

The residents who accept this unequal relationship between patron and client

constitute the basis of the broker’s legitimacy. This relationship accepts a dominating

network in which the broker monopolizes resources and creates a situation of

dependency. Yet Auyero points out that this relationship is fragile because brokers have a

limited capacity to deliver favors. Even the slum’s most powerful broker can only retain

around 100 close followers out of a voting population of 7,000 due to several constraints.

First, close patron-client bonds entail personal interaction and therefore a time

commitment. Second, brokers do not have an unlimited supply of patronage resources

and can only distribute them to a finite number of individuals. Third, the supply of favors

is contingent upon the broker’s patron at a higher level, in this case the mayor. Although

Auyero is not dismissive of the importance of clientelism, he asserts that it is not all-

powerful. Clients provide a core base of support and can be vital in internal party politics.

Yet the small fraction of the population that actively benefits from clientelism does not

explain the single-party and single-faction dominance usually associated with clientelism.

Auyero concludes that the current knowledge of clientelism is still underdeveloped in a

few areas. Insufficient research has been conducted upon the role of these networks in

generating Peronist identity, mobilizing voters for elections, and explaining the

conceptual and behavioral frameworks of individuals involved in clientelistic networks.

22. Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno, and Susan C. Stokes, “Vote Buying In Argentina,” Latin American Research Review 39, no. 2 (2004), pp. 66–88.

Argentine politicians often buy votes by distributing cash and minor consumption

goods in exchange for electoral support. Yet, despite the extensive scholarship on

Argentine clientelism, some important questions about the practice remain unanswered:

how widespread is vote buying? How much does it influence elections? Why is it

effective when voting is anonymous? Who sells their vote? Valeria Brusco, Marcelo

Nazareno, and Susan C. Stokes conducted a survey in three Argentine provinces in order

to better understand the dynamics of Argentine vote buying. Distributing handouts

appears to be a fairly effective electoral strategy that reaches a significant minority of the

Argentine population, although most Argentineans say they focus on parties’

programmatic appeals when voting. The citizens most susceptible to vote buying are

young, poor, Peronist sympathizers; as Peronism has shifted towards neoliberal policies

that hurt poor voters, it has resorted to clientelism to preserve their loyalty. Although

parties cannot directly observe citizens’ voting behavior, they can effectively monitor

proxies for voting behavior in order to efficiently target handouts. Voters therefore face

“probabilistic selective incentives” that make opposing a political machine dangerous,

although electoral reforms that make vote monitoring more difficult can impede

clientelism.

Vote buying seems to be a common but not pervasive feature of Argentine politics.

Forty-four percent of Argentinean respondents reported vote buying in their

neighborhoods, thirty-three percent of respondents could name what handouts were being

distributed and by what parties, and thirty-three percent of respondents stated that they

would turn to a party operative for help if they lost their job. However, only seven

percent of respondents acknowledged receiving handouts themselves, and less than two

percent acknowledged both that they had received a handout and that it influenced them.

Vote buying was notably more frequent among the poor and among Peronists: eighteen

percent of poor Peronists acknowledged receiving a handout and five percent claimed

that it influenced their vote. The average female Peronist sympathizer has a 58 percent

probability of receiving a handout, while an identical supporter of the Radical Civic

Union (Argentina’s other major party) only has a 37 percent likelihood of receiving such

a handout. Handouts influence votes, particularly for the Peronists: an average woman

sympathetic to the Peronists voted for the Eduardo Duhalde (the Peronist presidential

candidate in 1999) with a 49 percent probability if she did not receive a handout and a 66

percent probability if she did.

Among Peronist sympathizers, young voters are more likely to embrace clientelism.

This trend suggests that the Peronists’ adoption of neoliberal economic policies under

President Carlos Menem made the party and its constituents more dependent on

clientelism. Although the party’s shift away from policies that support the working class

“might have been expected to reduce the party’s support among its traditional low

income constituents...the party stanched this potential outflow by offering small,

personalized material rewards” (pg. 73–74). Older Peronists, who retain an ideological

loyalty to the party, are less likely to receive handouts and less willing to utilize party

brokers than their younger peers. Among supporters of the Radical Civic Union, which

draws support from a middle-class constituency, there is no association between age and

clientelism; it is likely that young Peronists are uniquely more clientelistic because they

have been singularly hurt by neoliberalism before developing firm political loyalties.

Parties are unlikely to distribute handouts unless these handouts translate into

electoral support. Because Argentineans vote using a secret ballot, parties depend on

indirect mechanisms to ensure that citizens vote for the party that gives them handouts.

Party operatives can gather information about voters that allows parties to make good

(albeit imperfect) inferences about individuals’ voting behavior. Although some

individuals may betray the party undetected and others may remain loyal but be falsely

punished, voters have a “probabilistic selective incentive” to vote for the party because

they are more likely to receive handouts if they do not betray it. The Peronist party,

which is more “intimately involved in the social networks of voters” (pg. 79) than other

parties, is more likely to buy votes because it can monitor whether individuals attend

rallies, use party-supplied transportation, and seem honest when claiming to support the

Peronists. Likewise, vote buying is more prevalent in small communities where people

know each other. Finally, because the Argentine electoral system uses ballots printed by

parties, parties can distribute ballots in advance alongside handouts. Voters who use

ballots distributed in advance are poorer and more sympathetic to Peronists and are more

likely to receive and be influenced by handouts.

There is little evidence that other enforcement mechanisms play a major role in

preventing defection. First, if parties rely on norms of reciprocity to “enforce the

clientelist bargain” (pg. 77) then vote sellers should be more likely to endorse these

norms. Yet Argentineans who actually received handouts were less likely than others to

claim that handouts create a sense of obligation: they knew that “being treated as a client

powerfully eroded” (pg. 82) a sense of reciprocal obligation. Overall, ninety percent of

voters indicated that receiving handouts should not create a sense of obligation, although

more believed that it did. Second, if vote sellers are indifferent to policy pledges because

they are skeptical about politicians’ credibility and discount future rewards, vote sellers

should be more likely than other voters to make decisions based on retrospective

evaluations of performance instead of prospective evaluations of policy platforms. There

is no empirical evidence that this is the case.

Clientelism appears to be a significant—but not dominant—feature of Argentine

politics. Most voters do not “experience elections as showers of petty gifts from political

parties” (pg. 83). Instead, they focus on parties’ programmatic appeals. However, the

discrepancy between the voting behavior of rich and poor voters is alarming. Democracy

cannot meaningfully promote equality and participation if the poor voters most hurt by

neoliberalism cannot use elections to articulate their needs and values. When parties

depend on clientelism, they have an incentive to keep their constituents poor and

dependent. Yet electoral reforms have the potential to curb clientelism. Although

Argentina has some prohibitions on distributing goods before elections, these laws could

be expanded and better enforced. Because parties’ distribution of ballots appears to

encourage clientelism, the country could introduce a ballot distributed by a neutral

election authority. In combination, these reforms should encourage programmatic

competition, democratic equality, and good governance.

23. Ernesto Calvo and Maria Victoria Murillo, “Who Delivers? Partisan Clients in the Argentine Electoral Market,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 4 (October 2004), pp. 742–757.

Some parties in clientelistic political systems utilize patronage more extensively than

others. Using evidence from Argentina, Ernesto Calvo and Maria Victoria Murillo show

that parties within one political system possess differing supplies of and demands for

patronage jobs. Parties’ access to patronage varies with institutional rules that influence

their access to public funds: given more financial resources, parties are more capable of

expanding government and offering jobs to supporters. Some parties, however, can use

the same amount of patronage more effectively than others. Parties that enjoy support

from lower-class, lower-skilled workers can distribute relatively low-paying patronage

jobs to a greater number of followers than parties whose followers demand high-paying

patronage jobs. In Argentina, the Peronist Party (PJ) employs more patronage than its

rival, the Radical Civic Union (UCR), both because of rules that bias elections and fiscal

transfers in favor of the PJ and its stronghold districts (supply factors) and a low-income

electoral base that makes patronage efficient and allows it to pay supporters a higher

premium over private-sector wages (demand factors). By hiring a large number of

unskilled workers and paying them above the private sector rate, the PJ uses patronage to

exploit institutional biases and increase its own power.

Argentine politics at the national level have been highly competitive since 1983, but

the PJ enjoys significant advantages in subnational elections due to fiscal and electoral

rules. Both the Radicals and the Peronists have controlled the presidency twice, but the

Peronists consistently control the majority of governorships and the Lower House, have

always controlled the Senate, and enjoy more stable governing coalitions when in office.

The Argentine electoral system is “characterized by a majoritarian bias that benefits

winning parties in the less-populated provinces” (pg. 747) where the Peronists are strong.

In these scarcely populated provinces, a third of the country’s population controls 48

percent of its lower house seats and four percent of its population controls 25 percent of

its upper house seats. Through its dominance of the legislature and statehouses, the PJ has

control over extensive government resources that it can use for patronage. Furthermore,

provinces controlled by the PJ enjoy a greater share of federal revenue sharing and

federally financed expenditures. Even after controlling for income, population, and

electoral overrepresentation, a ten percent increase in the Peronists’ vote share is

associated with a three percent increase in the percentage of federally financed

expenditures and a four percent increase in revenue sharing, even when legislative

malapportionment is taken into account. In short, the rules of the game give the Peronists

a greater supply of patronage than their rivals.

The PJ is well-positioned to take advantage of these institutional biases because its

constituent base allows it to effectively distribute state resources through job-based

patronage. The PJ has historically enjoyed support from uneducated urban workers and

rural political bosses, who are more dependent on public support than the UCR’s base of

relatively educated urban middle classes. The two parties obtain different electoral

returns from identical strategies. Because they have different constituent bases, increasing

public employment raises support for PJ incumbents but not UCR incumbents. As a

result, the two parties prefer different strategies for setting the quantities and wages of

public employees. The Peronists, in order to appeal to their constituencies, prefer to hire a

large number of cheap unskilled workers but pay them a premium over the wages they

would receive in the private sector: on average, Peronist provinces pay $704 in wages

with a $171 premium over the private sector, while non-Peronist provinces pay an

average of $860 in wages with a $153 premium. Peronists pay the highest premium to

workers with five years of education, while non-Peronists pay the highest premium to

workers with eight to nine years of education. Facing budget constraints, this allows

Peronists to offer more patronage to a greater number of supporters. Higher government

wages are statistically correlated with fewer government employees, as the government

must employ fewer workers if these workers are higher-paid, and Peronist strength is

correlated with high wage premiums.

The distributive effects of patronage have a partisan bias. In Argentina, the PJ

benefits from the biases of both supply and demand, and therefore engages in far more

patronage than the UCR. However, patterns of patronage may change as institutional

shocks alter economic configuration and institutional rules. In other countries, the parties

that benefit from patronage may differ. Although the PJ is a labor party that uses

patronage as a complement to welfare, conservative parties may utilize patronage as a

substitute for formal welfare. The independent effects of supply and demand may also

benefit opposing parties instead of both benefitting the same party. The role of

partisanship in determining patronage should not be ignored. The relationship between

patron and client is conditioned by outside structural influences that influence parties’

abilities to effectively implement clientelism.

24. Daniel J. Epstein, “Clientelism versus Ideology: Problems of Party Development in Brazil,” Party Politics 15, no. 3 (May 2009), pp. 335–355.

Political parties may adopt several strategies for connecting with voters. Parties may

choose ideological, clientelistic, or personalistic approaches, depending on the

characteristics of party supporters and politicians and the organizational resources

available to parties. The strategies parties adopt, in turn, influence how parties represent

constituents and affect the composition of a government and the policies it adopts.

According to Daniel J. Epstein, party systems that make frequent use of clientelistic links

with voters are dangerous to democracy because they contain few structural incentives

for stable competition and make it difficult for citizens to translate their political beliefs

to the ballot. When parties do not have ideological bonds with voters and politicians, the

only real distinction between candidates is whether they can provide supporters with

material benefits. In Brazilian states dominated by clientelistic parties, party systems are

likely to be unstable over time, to be dominated by a single hegemonic party, or to be

fragmented into tiny parties without clear ideological distinctions. These party systems do

not give voters a manageable choice between distinctive parties and therefore cannot

ensure a government representative of public opinion.

Since party labels provide useful information about candidates, political parties help

voters represent their preferences because. Parties must meet three preconditions in order

to inform voters effectively. First, they must have a measure of continuity by regularly

contesting elections. Second, they must be distinguishable as a major party, rather than

“just another among a profusion of tiny, futile parties” (pg. 338). Third, they must be

identifiable with clearly articulated goals and membership. Brazilian party organizations

at the state level, which are powerful and highly autonomous from national organizations,

often fail to meet these prerequisites for providing easy, distinct, and meaningful choices

on the ballot. Epstein classifies these failures along two dimensions: failure of

concentration (too many parties) and failure of stability (frequently changing parties).

The two dimensions converge to create a fourfold typology of party systems in Brazilian

states that demonstrates the weakness of subnational liberal democracy across much of

the country. States like Rondônia, Roraima, and Paranâ demonstrate a pattern of

“unstable competitive” parties where “only a few parties win seats, but the set of major

competitive parties changes from election to election” (pg. 342), which diminishes

parties’ credibility. Other states, such as Rio de Janeiro, have “fragmented” party systems

with many small, indistinct parties that make it difficult for voters to coalesce around a

single opposition figure. “Hegemonic” party systems, such as those exiting in the state of

Bahia, where a single party dominates competition by controlling state resources,

concentrate power so absolutely that they constitute “a threat to the very concept of

democratic choice” (pg. 341). Only a handful of states—Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do

Sul, Rio Grande do Norte, Piauí, and to some extent Goiâs—demonstrate the “stable

competitive” party systems conducive to good governance.

The diversity of party systems across Brazilian states can be explained by parties’ use

of clientelism to connect with constituents. In light of the weaknesses of other

explanations, Epstein suggests that instability is more likely when more parties employ

clientelism. When parties do not employ clientelism, support “will coalesce around a few

ideological viewpoints” (pg. 349), each represented by a party. The combination of

internal ideological bonds and the difficulty of establishing splinter parties creates the

ideal stable competitive party system. If some parties are able to make ideological

appeals while others utilize patronage, however, voting may be split between many

parties to create a fragmented party system where party labels are not meaningful enough

to help voters make informed decisions. If ideological parties are entirely absent, the

number of parties will fall, but any change in the resources available to parties can

determine which parties can compete to buy loyalty, creating an unstable competitive

system where power shifts frequently and a changing set of a few parties at a time are

politically powerful. If one party can monopolize resources and deploy them as

patronage, it can establish a hegemonic party system in which its rivals, minor

ideological parties, cannot break the dominant party’s hold. This is likely to occur in

provinces where there are few private sources of wealth that can challenge a party that

controls state resources.

Although there is no direct way to test the relationship between clientelism and party

system, tentative evidence supports Epstein’s hypothesis. In the absence of direct

statistics on clientelism, he suggests that voting patterns in Brazil’s open list electoral

system can be used as a proxy for clientelism. First, candidates from a programmatic

party all represent and campaign on the same ideology, so voters should care only

marginally about which candidate from a given party to vote for. As such, the party’s

candidates should all receive similar numbers of votes. In contrast, parties that “depend

on a few clientelistic candidates to sweep a large slate into office” (pg. 350) will have a

high degree of variance between the least and most popular candidates. Statistical

analysis shows that unstable competitive systems have higher variance—more clientelism

—than stable competitive systems, although the significance of the results in weak and

fragmented systems—contrary to Epstein’s argument—demonstrate greater variance than

unstable competitive systems. Second, clientelistic parties are likely to see a higher rate

of defection by political candidates. Stable competitive systems saw the least party

switching followed by hegemonic, fragmented, and unstable competitive systems,

respectively. The confidence levels of the statistical analysis are again weak, possibly as

a result of an outlier and the small sample size (because of the time involved in coding

defections, Epstein only analyzes 12 of Brazil’s 29 states). However, the results do

suggest a tentative relationship between clientelism and party system fragmentation.

In short, limited evidence suggests that clientelism creates ineffective parties that are

either too weakly institutionalized or too deeply intertwined with government. Epstein

calls for further research into the relationship between clientelism and party organization

that can give greater statistical weight to his claims and augment them with qualitative

understanding: collecting full datasets for all the Brazilian states, finding improved

measures of clientelism like corruption surveys or pork-barrel spending, and conducting

field research to confirm the mechanisms behind statistical patterns to validate the link

between clientelism and problematic party systems. This research can help shed light on

the mechanisms by which clientelism relates to democracy—not only does it directly

interfere with good governance by diminishing policy accountability and removing the

incentives to vote one’s conscience, it indirectly interferes with the operation of

democracy by making it difficult to translate frustration with the ruling power into

effective opposition.

25. Jonathan Fox, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico,” World Politics 46, no. 2 (January 1994), pp. 151–184.

Although free and fair elections are a necessary condition for democracy, most

contemporary scholars recognize that they are not a sufficient condition. Jonathan Fox

argues that another vital component of democracy is the development of an autonomous

civil society capable of articulating interests, which may precede free and fair elections.

As such, “there is more to democratization than the transition to elections” (pg. 151).

Democratization entails the transition from authoritarian “clientelism,” defined as a

relationship in which people must demonstrate political subservience in exchange for

benefits from the state, to pluralistic “citizenship,” in which people receive both political

autonomy and state benefits. Examining Mexico, Fox considers how semi-democratic

and authoritarian regimes begin to recognize individuals’ rights to political autonomy.

The article begins by developing an analytical framework for classifying the

relationship between the state and the individual and understanding what causes this

relationship to change. Fox argues that economic and social modernization is not

sufficient to explain this relationship: the erosion of traditional social structures has led

both to more pluralistic and open social structures and to more violent or sophisticated

authoritarian structures (as in rural Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines in the 1980s).

Nor does associational autonomy emerge automatically with the introduction of elections.

Instead “the right to associational autonomy is politically constructed through iterative

cycles of conflict” (pg. 156) between conservative authoritarian elites, reformist elites,

and social groups struggling for autonomy following a legitimacy crisis that fractures

elites.

Three relationships between state and society emerge from this bargaining. Following

the bargaining, “redoubts of persistent clientelism can coexist with new enclaves of

pluralist tolerance, as well as with large gray areas of ‘semiclientelism’ in between” (pg.

157). Semiclientelism is analytically distinct from both pluralism and clientelism because

elites demand political subservience in exchange for states benefits (unlike pluralism) but

have little or no ability to detect and punish people who refuse to be politically

subservient (unlike clientelism). For example, clientelism could involve officials

monitoring ballot boxes and threatening individuals who do not vote for them, while

semi-clientelism would involve providing “gifts” in exchange for unverifiable support in

an election with secret balloting. All three relationships can coexist at the same time in

the same country, because the outcome of bargaining often depends on the attitudes of

local elites and the strength of local civil society.

To illustrate the change in state/society relations, Fox describes changes in access to

state material resources by the rural, largely indigenous, poor in Mexico. Traditionally,

social groups were required to submit to the state in exchange for corporatist access to

patronage. However, after the state’s repression of student protests triggered a legitimacy

crisis in 1968, reformers introduced a succession of three rural development programs

that bypassed the traditional state apparatus, targeted patronage specifically to the poor,

and triggered a change in the traditional clientelistic relationship. Mexico first attempted

to target the rural poor directly, rather than through local patrons, with the Program for

Rural Development Investments (PIDER) in 1973. In practice, PIDER benefits were

often captured by local elites who utilized benefits for political gain, leading to a second

round of reforms that focused on the village food store program. The program, which

attempted to weaken monopolies over basic food products in rural areas, brought together

local delegates to form community food councils that were regional in scope. Although

often captured by local elites, these councils nonetheless “generated an organized,

relatively autonomous constituency” (pg. 164) with some capability to demand continued

state support and protest corruption and incompetence in government. They “became a

new, two-way bridge between state and societal actors” (pg. 165). In both programs, the

actual relationship between individual and society was not uniform across Mexico—it

depended on the attitudes of local elites implementing programs and yielded a patchwork

of clientelism and semi-clientelism.

Following another legitimacy crisis—an unexpected electoral challenge in 1988—the

ruling PRI moved to strengthen political support by reforming social spending. It

consolidated programs into a National Solidarity Program that decentralized authority to

local governments and “solidarity committees” in a partnership between state and society.

Solidarity was an attempt to build clientelistic political support for the PRI—funds were

targeted to areas where the party faced serious challenges and diverted from areas where

PRI authorities were accused of election fraud—but it also accepted a systematic role for

social groups. Fox focuses on the National Indigenous Institute (INI), which was

responsible for economic development among native populations and administered the

most innovative and participatory Solidarity programs under a mandate of

“strengthening…indigenous organizations, increasing their autonomy and their capacity

for representation and management” (pg. 171). Fox found that between a quarter and a

third of the Regional Solidarity Funds were under the pluralistic control of autonomous

locals, a similar number were controlled by clientelist political bosses, and the plurality

were under continuing control of INI staff. Solidarity funds “simultaneously pressured

reformists to encourage the legitimacy of pluralism, created an incentive for them to use

the programs as a semi-clientelistic mechanism to discourage electoral opposition, and

provoked an authoritarian backlash from clientelistic machine politicians” (pg. 179). As

such, the program created a diverse set of arrangements between state and society.

Fox concludes the article by assessing the relationship between the electoral and

nonelectoral realms of democracy and finds that “it is difficult to generalize about how

national political change interacts with the process of extending effective citizenship

rights” (pg. 180), but that democratic transition are more multifaceted than commonly

conceived. Antipoverty programs similar to Solidarity have varying effects on democracy

depending on their degree of political conditionality—they have reinforced

authoritarianism in El Salvador and Senegal but promoted democracy in Bolivia, Chile,

and Zambia. Electoral competition can strengthen citizenship rights by giving social

groups greater bargaining power, but it can also strengthen clientelism by increasing the

incentive for fraud and violence to retain power. Clientelist enclaves in an electoral

democracy can provide the marginal votes to alter election outcomes and inhibit the

transition to true liberal democracy. As such, Fox concludes, “the conventional notion of

political democratization as a single regime transition should be recast as asset of

transitions” (pg. 184), including the transition from clientelism to citizenship.

26. Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos, Chad Kiewiet de Jone, Carlos Melendez, Javier Osorio, and David W. Nickerson, “Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias: Experimental Evidence from Nicaragua,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods, & Political Market Failure,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

Qualitative studies of vote buying usually find that it is pervasive in developing

societies, but quantitative surveys find only very limited levels of vote buying. This

discrepancy is the result of the social desirability bias: because selling votes contradicts

democratic norms, indicates poverty, and is often illegal, survey respondents who sell

their vote are likely to deny doing so. To measure the true extent of vote buying and the

magnitude of the social desirability bias, Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. conducted an

unobtrusive list experiment survey of Nicaraguan municipal elections. In addition to

asking respondents whether they had sold their vote or seen neighbors doing so, the

authors presented respondents with a list of campaign tactics and asked how many tactics

they had been targeted with over the course of the campaign. The list of tactics presented

to the experimental group included vote buying and four other possibilities, while the list

presented to the control group only included the four other possibilities. By comparing

the average numbers of tactics reported by the control and experimental groups, the

authors were able to more accurately calculate how many people received electoral gifts.

Although twenty-four percent of voters were offered a gift in exchange for their vote,

only two percent of voters reported this behavior when asked directly. Even when

respondents were asked about vote buying by others in their neighborhoods, which

provides a relatively accurate picture of how extensive clientelism is, the social

desirability bias can distort scholars’ understanding of the practice. While most research

finds that vote buying is particularly pervasive among the poor and uneducated, the list

experiment found that vote buying occurs equally across parties and socioeconomic strata

in Nicaragua.

The authors are interested in measuring three characteristics of vote buying: how

widespread it is, who participates in it, and how accurately other surveys measure it. To

do so, they conducted a list experiment survey immediately following the 2008 municipal

elections in Nicaragua. They divided their survey sample (1,008 people) into control and

experimental groups. Respondents in each group were asked to count the number of ways

candidates had courted their vote: putting up signs or posters, visiting their homes,

advertising on radio and television, and threatening them. The experimental group was

also asked about the use of a fifth campaign tactic: gifts or favors to potential voters.

Because respondents did not have to divulge whether or not they had accepted gifts or

favors—only how many tactics they had been targeted with—there was less social

pressure to deny vote buying. However, the authors are able to estimate the amount of

vote buying in the group by comparing the average number of tactics reported by the

control and experimental groups. For example, if respondents in the control group

reported an average of 2 tactics and respondents in the experimental group reported an

average of 2.5 tactics, the most plausible explanation is that half of all respondents in the

experimental group witnessed the additional tactic of vote buying. To measure the

prevalence of vote buying across subgroups, the authors asked about respondents’

demographic characteristics, beliefs about vote monitoring, and political participation.

Finally, to compare list experiments with other survey methods, the survey directly asked

respondents whether they had received gifts or favors in exchange for their vote and

whether others in their neighborhood had done the same.

The list experiment estimates that 24 percent of voters received gifts or favors during

the election, although only 2.4 percent of voters directly acknowledged receiving a gift.

Vote buying extended equally across all social groups. Independents and supporters of

both major parties all received patronage, and the rich and educated were targeted as

much as the poor and uneducated. Gonazlez-Ocantos et al. speculate that this could be

due to several factors: peculiar characteristics of the Nicaraguan political system, low-

turnout municipal elections, the fact that Nicaragua is poorer than many of the other

states in which clientelism has been studied, or the survey’s income classifications were

too coarse. Vote buying was, however, strongly associated with two voter characteristics:

beliefs about ballot secrecy and participation in local political institutions. Among voters

who believed their votes were confidential, only 6 percent reported vote buying; among

voters who believed that parties could monitor ballots, that figure rose to 49 percent.

Among citizens who had attended a meeting of a Citizen Power Council (Consejo de

Poder Ciudadano, government-sponsored neighborhood organizations based on a model

created by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela), 48 percent reported vote buying, compared with

only 19 percent among those who had never attended a meeting. These councils likely

play a dual role: they are both a conduit for the clientelistic distribution of goods, and a

means of convincing voters that parties are capable of monitoring ballots.

Using a list experiment produces systematically different information on the

characteristics of vote buying targets than using direct questions. Although nearly 18

percent of respondents reported vote buying in their neighborhood—not significantly

different than the figure obtained through the list experiment—direct questions

systematically underestimated vote buying across subgroups, and failed to accurately

detect the characteristics of vote buying recipients. Only 53 percent of respondents who

reported vote buying in their neighborhood reported receiving a gift in the list

experiment, and 18 percent of respondents who did not report vote buying in their

neighborhood received a gift according to list experiment estimates. Supporters of the

conservative PLC party, wealthy voters, young voters, and men were more likely to

report vote buying in their neighborhood, although the list experiment indicates that

party, wealth, and demographic traits are not meaningfully associated with the practice.

Respondents who directly reported receiving gifts themselves were excessively likely to

be supporters of the liberal FSLN (the Sandanistas). People who believe that parties can

monitor ballots were less likely to directly report receiving gifts, but more likely to report

vote buying in their neighborhood. Neither direct approach detects the role of the Citizen

Power Councils. The conventional survey measures of vote buying contradict each other,

while both appear to suffer from different distortions of the social desirability bias.

Although imperfect, the list experiment has clear advantages over more obtrusive

survey measures. List experiments mitigate the impact of social desirability bias, but are

unlikely to entirely eliminate it, as they may still skew the characteristics of gift

recipients somewhat and underestimate the magnitude of vote buying. Furthermore,

because list experiments cannot provide individual information about gift recipients, they

cannot be used to build regression models. However, the experiment still reveals both the

widespread extent and nondiscriminatory targeting of vote buying. The survey shows that

vote buying is widespread, that voters’ beliefs about ballot secrecy and their participation

in state-sponsored community groups are key mechanisms of clientelism in Nicaragua,

and that poor voters are more likely to be unaffected by the social desirability bias and

report vote buying, even though the phenomenon occurs equally across class and party

lines. These results point to several directions for future research. First, scholars should

examine the conditions that mitigate or exacerbate social desirability bias. Second,

scholars should give greater consideration to the mechanisms that parties use to distribute

gifts and monitor votes, such as the Citizen Power Councils: are parties actually capable

of monitoring ballots, do they monitor citizens’ general commitment to the party, or do

they persuade voters that parties are more powerful than they actually are? Third, and in

order to pursue the first two questions, scholars should conduct list experiments across a

broader range of political settings to examine what drives cross-national variation in vote

buying strategies and determine whether the Nicaraguan results apply to other cases.

27. Susan C. Stokes, “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005), pp. 315–325.

Even the most powerful political machines have limited quantities of resources. In

order to preserve their own power, machines must deploy these resources in a strategic

manner to efficiently buy votes and discourage or defeat rivals. This entails targeting

patronage towards individuals whose votes can be bought easily and establishing a

system of “perverse accountability” to punish these individuals if they do not actually

vote for the machine. A combination of formal models and empirical evidence suggests

that perverse accountability is a critical element of clientelism. Formal models show that

when parties are able to monitor individuals’ actions, interact with voters repeatedly, and

reward supporters even when parties lose elections, parties can maintain perverse

accountability and maximize their electoral returns by targeting poor, weakly opposed

voters in communities where the parties are embedded in social networks. Evidence from

Argentina largely supports these conclusions: political machines tend to target

socioeconomically disadvantaged voters who are weakly supportive of the machines,

operate most effectively when they have party structures and community structures that

facilitate deep social penetration, and benefit from flawed electoral systems.

Stokes argues that trading gifts for votes is only an effective electoral strategy when

voters and machines interact with each other repeatedly and can punish each other based

on past behavior, satisfying three conditions. First, parties must have some chance of

observing citizens’ voting behavior and partisan predispositions. In some cases, they may

do so by exploiting or violating electoral rules. In other cases, they may monitor votes by

penetrating social networks, particularly in geographically isolated and immobile

communities where these networks are dense. Local political operatives can predict

people’s political inclinations and behavior since many people have difficulty lying about

their voting behavior to neighbors and acquaintances, and because people’s “job,

associational membership, parents’ ideological inclinations, and public statements about

parties and policies” (pg. 317) provide good proxies. Second, voters and parties must

interact repeatedly over the foreseeable future. Parties that are not embedded in local

communities face difficulty buying votes, because citizens do not believe these parties

are credibly committed to providing benefits into the future. Finally, parties must be able

to continue providing benefits to their followers if they lose an election. Machines that

face active political competition can survive in opposition by utilizing private resources

from elites who expect future political concessions, or by relying on state resources that

carry over from the machine’s period of rule.

When these conditions are met, clientelism can be represented as a formal model

where machines and weakly opposed or indifferent voters have an incentive to trade

votes for rewards. When determining how to cast their votes, voters assess ideological

proximity to both parties (on a left-right scale) and the value of the reward offered by the

machine. Loyal voters prefer to support the machine even without a reward, and

opposition voters prefer to oppose the machine and lose the reward, so the machine has

little incentive to distribute patronage to either group. However, some voters only have a

weak ideological opposition to the machine. Although they would like to accept the

machine’s reward and then vote against it, they can be persuaded to vote for the machine.

By interviewing Argentine political brokers, Stokes found that machines often pursue a

“grim trigger” strategy: they initially offer rewards to all weakly opposed voters, but

permanently halt rewards to any voter who betrays the party once. If machines can detect

and punish betrayal, weakly opposed and indifferent voters may prefer to cooperate with

the machine and receive rewards for the indefinite future, rather than betray the machine

and benefit in the short term but risk losing all future rewards. These voters are more

likely to support the machine when the ideological distance between the parties is small

(voting for an ideologically opposed party is less distasteful), when the value of the

reward is relatively large compared with the value of ideology, and when the machine

can monitor voters with high accuracy. Among these voters, machines are likely to target

poor voters that place high value on relatively small sums of money.

In Argentina, the actual practices of political machines closely resemble the

predictions of the formal model. Empirical evidence confirms the importance of parties’

monitoring capacity, the critical role of poor voters, and the small role of ideologically

committed voters. Survey respondents were more likely to report receiving rewards when

they were poor, uneducated, and lacked high-quality housing: the probability that the

worst-off respondent would receive a reward was 13 percent, compared with 0.2 percent

for the best-off respondent. Institutions also mattered: the Peronist party, with a “tentacle-

like” (pg. 322) organizational structure that penetrates local social networks, bought far

more votes than its competitors. Respondents in small communities, where monitoring

votes is easy, were more likely to receive and respond to rewards. Voters who used

ballots distributed face-to-face by party operatives were more likely to receive and be

influenced by rewards than voters who used ballots collected anonymously in the voting

booth (Argentine voters seal ballots in envelopes while in the voting booth, but parties

print their own ballots and can distribute them before elections). Finally, ideologically

extreme voters who rated the Peronists as “very good” or “very bad” were less likely to

receive rewards than voters who rated them as “good” or “bad.” However, contrary to the

model’s prediction, nearly 60 percent of the Peronists’ reward recipients rated the

Peronists as good, although “even voters just mildly predisposed in the machines favor

would not be able to credibly threaten” (pg. 323) to vote for the opposition in the formal

model, and are therefore poor targets for rewards. This might be because some voters are

actually indifferent rather than mildly supportive, support the Peronists only because they

receive rewards, or are influenced by the machine’s proselytizing in areas where it

distributes rewards.

Machines use their social proximity to voters both to monitor voters’ behavior and

predispositions and to develop relationships with voters over time. As a result, patronage

is usually targeted towards poor and ideologically centrist voters and is more extensive

when parties are ideologically similar and can effectively monitor votes, and machines

are usually deeply integrated into communities. Political machines’ integration into social

networks also explains some features of clientelism that otherwise defy formal modeling.

Machines rarely compete with each other for the same constituents because they are not

integrated with the same network of constituents, and one party often prefers

programmatic to clientelistic linkages because it depends on a middle-class constituency

that is more difficult to monitor. Both formal and empirical evidence confirm that

machines’ ability to monitor voters is as critical to clientelism as machines’ ability to

deliver services: without this capability, clients have no reason to comply with the

bargain, and machines have no reason to deliver services at all.

28. Mariela Szwarcberg, “Who Monitors? Clientelism and Democratic Representation in Argentine Municipalities,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failures,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

Clientelistic politicians expect to receive political support in exchange for providing

material benefits such as food, government jobs, and unemployment benefits to

constituents. This is an effective strategy for retaining support as long as the constituents

who receive the benefits actually support those politicians during elections. As such,

clientelistic politicians attempt to prevent the hazard of providing benefits to non-

supporters by monitoring constituents’ attendance at rallies, participation during

elections, and voting behavior. However, even in countries where clientelism is

widespread, some politicians do not monitor voters and therefore do not participate in

clientelism. Candidates choose whether to monitor votes and engage in clientelism based

on their dependence on clientelism for winning elections and their ability to track voting

behavior effectively.

Mariela Szwarcberg discusses the conditions under which politicians in Argentina are

likely to monitor votes. To this extent, she studies the practices of approximately 140

local politicians from selected municipalities in the Buenos Aires and Cordoba provinces,

using both interviews and archival research. Because secret balloting prevents politicians

from reliably tracking votes and mandatory voting in Argentina prevents politicians from

using election turnout as a meaningful indicator of support, Szwarcberg studies

candidates’ decisions whether to monitor constituent attendance at rallies. She

hypothesizes that politicians are more likely to monitor political behavior if they are paid

party activists (rather than unpaid activists or “top-down” candidates selected from the

national establishment), if they are members of the Peronist party (rather than the Radical

party or a third party), and if they work in large municipalities (where informal methods

cannot ensure clientelistic loyalty).

The statistical analysis of Szwarcberg’s data largely confirms her hypotheses. The

author uses interviews, personal observations, and archival research to classify whether

or not candidates had taken attendance at rallies and then constructed a logistic regression

model with vote monitoring as the dependent variable. She finds that, even in a political

system where clientelism is fairly widely accepted, only half of all candidates monitored

constituent attendance at rallies. Three factors were significant in explaining the

distinction between candidates who do and do not monitor votes: candidates’ political

backgrounds, their party membership, and the size of their districts.

Szwarcbeg distinguishes between three backgrounds that influence clientelistic

behavior: paid party activists who received salaries from the party to help residents with

their problems and mobilize them to vote, unpaid party activists who helped residents

with their problems but were not sanctioned or paid by the party, and well-known and

well-connected outsiders without grassroots experience who were invited to run for office

by party leadership. Candidates with backgrounds as paid party activists were the most

likely to monitor attendance, in part because these candidates maintain support “through

a flow of clientelistic inducements” (pg. 21), which requires vote monitoring to be

effective, and because they face pressure to turn out support in order to retain their

position. Unpaid district activists and elite-selected outsiders were less clientelistic: the

former because they have less access to patronage resources and face less pressure to turn

out support, the latter because they do not need to prove themselves to the party in order

to retain their position.

Although candidates’ political backgrounds had the largest impact on their decision to

monitor, candidates from small municipalities and minority parties were also

significantly less likely to monitor votes. Szwarcberg explains the role of municipality

size by noting that voters in small municipalities can be monitored informally, without

taking attendance. However, she does not explain the role of minority party status. Her

initial hypothesis was that the Peronist party would be more likely to monitor votes than

both the Radical party (the other major political party) and minority parties because the

Peronist party draws support from low-income voters and “party identification is

cemented by clientelistic political machines” (pg. 18). While the model does find that

minority parties were less likely to monitor attendance, it does not find a significant

difference in attendance monitoring between the Peronist and Radical parties.

Szwarcberg argues that the use of clientelism has been facilitated by the institutional

flexibility of Argentine parties. The politically successful Peronist party is a “big tent”

with candidates from a variety of social classes and ideologies, and Szwarcberg follows

Levitsky (2003) in claiming that institutional flexibility has benefited the party. However,

she notes that this flexibility also “strengthens existing informal incentives that

encourages candidates to use clientelism” (pg. 23), because there are no well-established

political career paths, decision and accountability rules, or connections between party

factions and sectors. Successful minority parties such as Partido Nuevo in Cordoba and

Nuevo Moron in Buenos Aires face difficulties in providing an alternative to large,

flexible, clientelistic parties. With a support base of middle-class and professional voters,

a relatively undeveloped grassroots network, and a platform that rejects traditional

clientelistic tactics, these parties are unable to employ clientelism. Instead, they must

prove that they can govern with more competence, transparency, and accountability than

the major parties, despite their lack of previous governing experience.

Rising minority parties and increasing levels of wealth and education can reduce or

eliminate clientelism. However, Szwarcberg argues that studying the operation of

clientelism permits “changes in the mechanisms that enable candidates to monitor voters”

(pg. 28) and can also reduce or eliminate clientelism. Combating clientelism improves the

quality of democracy—if voters make decisions based upon material inducements and

fear of retribution rather than support for candidates’ policy platforms, electoral and

policymaking outcomes will be distorted. In particular, clientelism can “silence the

voices of the most vulnerable voters” (pg. 28) who face greater material insecurity and

are more susceptible to clientelistic appeals. In doing so, clientelism not only undermines

good governance but threatens the very democratic legitimacy of a political system. As

such, further research into the ways parties monitor voters is imperative for promoting

fair, just, and legitimate governments.

29. Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, “Choosing Clientelism: Political Competition, Poverty, and Social Welfare Policy in Argentina,” paper presented at conference on “Redistribution, Public Goods & Political Market Failure,” April 9–10, 2010, Yale University.

Studies of clientelism have produced divergent findings on the relationship between

clientelism and political competition. Some scholars find that “clientelism might both

create and be a product of” (pg. 3) uncompetitive regimes, because it removes public

pressure for governing politicians to abandon the practice and gives them an unfair

electoral advantage. Others believe that, because clientelism is an effective means of

attracting support from targeted segments of the population, politicians are more likely to

distribute patronage when political competition increases the urgency of building popular

support. Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, reconciling these two findings, argues that the

relationship between competition and clientelism is contingent on economic

development. Although clientelism is useful for attracting the support of poor voters, it

entails direct political costs because it is likely to reduce support from the middle class.

Studying the distribution of food aid in Argentine municipalities, she finds that, when

strong political competition is coupled with a low level of development and a small

middle class, politicians are likely to compete for votes using clientelistic strategies.

When strong political competition is coupled with a high level of development and a

strong middle class, however, clientelism is politically costly and politicians are unlikely

to resort to patronage. Without political competition, the relationship between clientelism

and development is more ambiguous and depends on other factors.

Clientelism carries political costs because it affects the voting behavior of many

voters who are not clients. While it is likely to increase support among poor, dependent

clients, clientelism is also likely to decrease support among financially independent

members of the middle class who have little use for clientelism and are ineligible for

clientelistic welfare schemes. Some political costs of clientelism are indirect, because

spending on patronage programs decreases the amount that could have been spent on

other items. Other costs are direct. Middle class voters depend on government services,

such as education and policing, and may “view clientelism as a negative signal of the

quality of government performance more generally” (pg. 4) and therefore vote against

clientelistic parties and politicians. Furthermore, middle class voters may be ideologically

opposed to clientelism, because they believe it undermines democracy and creates

dependence among the poor. These direct costs are applicable even if patronage goods

are not funded with tax receipts. When competition for votes is intense, politicians will

base their decisions about whether to use clientelism on the prevailing popular attitudes

about the practice—popular attitudes that depend on the economic composition of their

constituency. When competition is less intense, politicians are free to base their electoral

strategies on factors other than the economic composition of their constituency.

The interaction between competition and development is evident in Argentine

mayors’ decisions to involve themselves in food distribution programs. To assess this

relationship, Weitz-Shapiro studies the personal involvement of mayors in the

distribution of foodstuffs through the National Food Security Program (Programa

Nacional de Seguridad Alimentaria, or PNSA). The PNSA is a multifaceted program that

includes distributing dried goods and food staples to poor households and reaches 29

percent of the Argentine population in the cities surveyed. While the program is

nationally funded, municipalities are responsible for registering recipients, administering

funds, and distributing food with little federal oversight, which allows local politicians to

influence the program’s implementation. Clientelistic mayors are likely to insert

themselves into the program’s implementation by involving themselves in the addition

and removal of clients from the program’s beneficiary list. The mayor can “become the

public face of these benefits” (pg. 8) and tie the receipt of food aid to demonstrations of

political loyalty.

To examine the role of mayors in the implementation of PNSA, Weitz-Shapiro

surveyed the directors of social welfare offices of 120 cities in the Cordóba, Río Negro,

and Salta provinces. She asked the directors whether the mayor “participated,” was

“consulted,” (pg. 12) or was the ultimate decision maker in creating and updating

recipient lists and found that the mayor was at least somewhat involved in two-thirds of

the cities surveyed. In cities with a low level of political competition, the mayors of rich

and poor towns have a similar propensity for clientelism when other factors are held

equal. However, as political competition increases, the mayors of poor towns become far

more likely to create clientelistic linkages with voters. The interaction between poverty

(the proportion of households with unmet basic needs) and competition (the size of the

opposition in the local legislature) is both statistically significant and a powerful predictor

of mayors’ involvement in welfare rolls; without it, neither poverty nor competition is

significant in predicting clientelism. When legislative opposition is below 40 percent,

there is no statistically significant difference between the levels of clientelism in rich and

poor municipalities, and mayoral intervention is sometimes more likely in low-poverty

towns. However, when the opposition occupies at least 40 percent of the legislature,

mayors in high-poverty towns are significantly more likely to intervene in PNSA

beneficiary lists. When opposition legislators control 60 percent of the seats, mayors in

high poverty municipalities are about 40 percent more likely to intervene. Among the

other variables included in the model, only population is significant: larger municipalities

complicate vote monitoring and make clientelism more costly. The dominance of the

mayors’ party and the strength of local civil society are not significant, and the mayors’

affiliation with a Peronist party is only significant when variables for civil society are

included.

The interaction between poverty and competition is not only a significant factor for

explaining clientelism, it is the dominant factor. Accurately assessing the electoral costs

and benefits of clientelism requires moving away from a narrow focus on poor clients to

examine the reactions of other groups—notably the middle class—to clientelism. As the

size and influence of the middle class increases, clientelism becomes a less appealing

electoral strategy under competitive pressure. In fact, when the interaction between

poverty and clientelism is taken into account, the often-vaunted role of partisanship in

Argentine clientelism is far from central. Unfortunately, this relationship also highlights a

difficulty for building good democratic governance: until a large middle class can

emerge, the intense electoral competition that is usually considered healthy for a

democracy may undermine strong, programmatic policymaking.

Middle East

30. Ellen Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East,” Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (July 2009), pp. 122–135.

Although legislative elections sometimes bring about democratic transition, many

authoritarian regimes have conducted competitive legislative elections for decades

without jeopardizing their political power. These elections are a frequent occurrence in

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) governments, including Egypt, Jordan,

Morocco, Kuwait, Syria, Algeria, and Palestine. Ellen Lust argues that the purpose of

elections in these governments is not to choose leaders or make policy, but to facilitate

“competitive clientelism:” competition over state resources that elected patrons can

distribute to clients. Because voters and candidates hostile to the government will not be

able to effectively access state resources, competitive clientelism is usually a

conservative force that reinforces the existing government.

The central purpose of the legislator in the authoritarian MENA states is to serve as a

wasta, or mediator, between the citizen and the state. In the absence of government

transparency and the rule of law, survey evidence shows that most individuals believe

that an intermediary is necessary to help them obtain benefits from the state: less than a

quarter of Algerians surveyed believed the best way to resolve a problem with the

government was to take it directly to the agency involved. The legislator is an ideal wasta

because he or she can resolve conflict and distribute state resources such as licenses, jobs,

housing, or higher education to loyal clients, and voters seek legislators who can and will

provide them with these benefits. In turn, the legislator receives personal access to state

resources as well as personal prestige and often spends significant resources on

campaigning. Because “citizens vote for wasta rather than this or that policy” (pg. 127),

however, clientelistic legislators are rarely challenged on the basis of their ideological

and programmatic attitudes. Without substantial policy platforms, political parties “tend

to be weak organization with little control over or support for their candidates” (pg. 127)

and are seen merely as “personalistic cliques” (pg. 131).

Competitive clientelism is generally a conservative force. Individuals who oppose the

existing government are rarely effective at extracting benefits from it, so they cannot

provide patronage and do not receive support. Voters from marginalized social groups are

unlikely to vote because they do not believe their legislator will provide them with

benefits, while voters from powerful social groups have an incentive to vote; likewise,

turnout is lower in (generally liberal) urban areas where interpersonal networks are

weaker that in rural (generally more conservative) areas. Elites who aspire to a seat in

parliament will continue to support the regime in the hope of one day winning office,

while genuine opposition figures are unlikely to even run for office, as doing so is

“ideologically distasteful and a poor investment” (pg. 129) for opposition figures because

it legitimizes the regimes, entails a costly campaign, and is unlikely to result in victory if

voters do not believe the candidate has wasta and is able to obtain state resources.

Under these circumstances, the prospects for authoritarian legislative elections to

cause meaningful democratization are small, although not nonexistent. Clientelistic

elections discredit and foster cynicism about democracy while supporting

authoritarianism by more efficiently distributing patronage by and coopting elites into

government. Authoritarian parliaments have few powers and are further weakened by a

high turnover rate, so they have little ability to affect change. However, elections may

still promote democratization if held in the face of political and economic crisis: if

legislators’ credibility is threatened because they lack political legitimacy or because

scarce resources inhibit their ability to deliver benefits to their clients, opposition

candidates may be able to seize control of the legislature. Strengthening electoral

procedures is not necessarily the most important component of democracy building

within authoritarian legislatures. Instead, Lust concludes that external groups should

apply pressure to increase the power of the legislature and should seek to diminish the

necessity of wasta via improved government accountability and economic development

in order to promote a programmatically-oriented legislative branch.

Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia

31. Klarita Gërxhani and Arthur Schram, “Clientelism and Polarized Voting: Empirical Evidence,” Public Choice 141, no. 3–4 (December 2009), pp. 305–317.

Formal models of voting typically assume that voters chose candidates based on a

rational evaluation of their policies: if an incumbent government performs poorly, voters

are likely to reject that government in an election. However, these models do not consider

the role of clientelism in determining voter behavior. Klarita Gërxhani and Arthur

Schram build an alternative formal model of voting behavior in post-Communist Albania

that takes into account the strong clientelistic ties between the major political parties and

their regional bases of support. They then test the performance of this model against a

more conventional model. The results support their hypothesis that voters with a

clientelistic attachment to one party support that party regardless of its policy

performance, as they receive continued benefits from the party. The success of this

clientelistic voting model suggests that clientelism and other nationally-specific features

need to be better taken into account in models of voting behavior.

Gërxhani and Schram begin by examining the clientelistic nature of Albanian politics.

Following the Cold War, two major political parties emerged in Albania: the Democratic

Party of Albania (DPA) and the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA). The parties reflect a

strong cultural and linguistic cleavage between the north and the south of the country: the

DPA is tied to the north and the SPA to the south. Both parties are controlled by small

groups of political elites who retain popular support in part by patronizing their bases of

support and distributing material benefits there. As such, Gërxhani and Schram classify

the political system as a system of “clientelistic parties” based on Han Joachim Lauth’s

criteria: it involves free political participation via elections, competing patron-client

networks in the north and south, and patrons who come primarily from the political

establishment. They hypothesize that clientelistic voters in the north and south will not

react critically to poor policy performance of their supported parties, and will instead

remain loyal regardless of their party’s behavior.

More specifically, the authors argue that “when the DPA (SPA) is in office, voters in

the south (north) react negatively to economic swings, which they attribute to the

government” but that voters “in the north (south) have a strong alliance with the

governing DPA (SPA) irrespective of its economic policies” (pg. 308). This phenomenon

was demonstrated in the 1996, 1997, and 2001 elections. In central Albania, where

clientelism is weaker, the authors predict that voters will evaluate both parties’ economic

performance. The model makes a simplifying assumption that the north is populated

exclusively by DPA clients, the south exclusively by SPA clients, and the central region

exclusively by non-clients. Economic performance is represented by the unemployment

level in voters’ districts: previous studies have established that unemployment and

inflation are the economic indicators most consistently related to voting behavior, and

district-level inflation data was not available to the authors.

Gërxhani and Schram first model how the individual voter assesses the quality of a

political party and then consider how individual assessments aggregate in the form of

elections. Voters assess the challenging party with a two term utility function: they make

decisions based on a regional ideological predisposition towards one party common to all

voters in a region (north, south, or central) but separate from clientelism, and a random,

exponentially distributed individual disposition towards one candidate. The utility

function for the incumbent party is based on these two terms plus a third term that

represents the voter’s evaluation of economic performance (a challenger does not have

economic performance to evaluate). Most voters compare the actual rate of

unemployment in their district with a baseline level of unemployment that is considered

acceptable by all Albanians and base their evaluation of economic policy on this

comparison. Voters in the same district place the same importance on economic issues,

although this may vary between districts. However, in the clientelistic version of the

model, voters in a party’s base region do not consider economic performance of that

party. The relative success of either party depends on the proportion of voters in a district

who favor it over its opposition.

By comparing the predictions of both non-clientelistic and clientelistic variations of

the model with actual electoral outcomes, the authors are able to assess the importance of

clientelism. They find that the statistical function that models the success of a party more

accurately describes actual outcomes when voters’ reactions to unemployment are

allowed to vary by region—for example, when northern voters with a clientelistic

attachment to a DPA incumbent do not care about its economic performance but southern

and central voters do. The explanatory power of the model without regional polarization

is noticeably weaker at explaining voting behavior than the model with regional

polarization: the former explains at least 8 percent less variation in the data for each of

the three elections surveyed. A formal test of statistical significance rejects the “no

polarization” model in favor of the more sophisticated “clientelistic polarization” model.

Based on the greater success of a clientelistic model for voting, the authors find that

“a proper evaluation of democratization in Albania requires looking beyond elections per

se” (pg. 314) to consider informal political ties. They highlight two speculative reasons

for the importance of clientelism in Albania. First, the longstanding clan divisions

between north and south may fuel clientelistic attitudes towards the parties. Second, the

weakness of Albania’s formal governing institutions may encourage the growth of

clientelism: without strong institutions, candidates cannot credibly make strong

commitments to take enact meaningful policies and instead face an agency problem.

Because it is impossible to change the historic cleavage between north and south, the

authors conclude in summary that “only if formal institutions develop that may better

guide and control government policies may it be possible to break the centuries old

informal institution of clientelism” (pg. 315).

32. Henry Hale, “Correlates of Clientelism: Political Economy, Politicized Ethnicity, and Post-Communist Transition,” in Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, ed. Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 227–250.

In the 1990s, elected regional leaders in Russia enjoyed immense political power. The

governors of Russia’s eighty-nine regions often perpetuated this power through their

control of political machines that rewarded supporters, punished opponents, and

marginalized challengers. They had “a highly complex series of levers with which they

could target powerful benefits and punishments to specific groups of people (and even to

key individuals) and could monitor these people’s loyalty” (pg. 228). Yet, at the same,

clientelism was not spread evenly throughout the regions; although a certain level of

clientelism was evident throughout the country, some regional governments were clearly

more clientelistic than others. To examine the “correlates of clientelism” throughout

Russia, Henry Hale analyzes the percentage of the vote obtained by governors’ preferred

candidates for the Duma (Russia’s lower house of Parliament) in 1999. His results

broadly conform with the predictions of Kitschelt and Wilkinson: clientelism is likely in

regions that are remote and agricultural, where political competition is low, where the

state can monitor and punish economic blocs of voters, and where ethnic networks are

politicized. The same patterns seem to appear in other countries that emerged from a style

of “patrimonial communism” similar to Russia’s.

Because they had leverage over key economic sectors and legal institutions, regional

political leaders (referred to here as “governors” although some have different titles) led

powerful political machines in the 1990s. They were also usually able to monitor the

behavior of voting blocs, which allowed them to effectively engage in contingent direct

exchange for votes. The power of Russia’s governors stemmed from Russian President

Boris Yeltsin’s decision to grant significant power and autonomy to regional leaders in

exchange for their support against his rival and superior, Soviet President Mikhail

Gorbachev. This autonomy allowed governors to develop machines as “party substitutes”

that maintained low public profiles, oriented themselves around the governor’s

personality and performance instead of a policy platform, and made little attempt at

permanent institutionalization. Because they eschew even a facade of programmatic

appeals and rational institutionalization, non-partisan machines can be an even more

extreme and pernicious form of clientelism than partisan machines.

Governors maintained their machines by monitoring, rewarding, and punishing

economic and ethnic blocs of voters. Governors were able to exert direct or indirect

control of key industries via shareholding, regulation, subsidization, and fiscal policy.

Enterprises that failed to deliver votes could expect to see their business suffer.

Furthermore, Russian legal culture allowed governors to selectively enforce laws such as

health and environmental standards and to pressure the police, tax police, prosecutor’s

office, and local courts. Machines used these sources of power to deny opposition

candidates publicity and to punish institutions and businesses that failed to mobilize

voters for them. In former collective farms, prisons, hospitals, and college towns, it was

easy to monitor support and reward or punish institutions accordingly because

institutions’ success in mobilizing voters could be assessed based on precinct-level

election returns from the areas where these institutions were located. Even in more

complex urban settings, machines could deploy campaign workers to monitor firms’

active and public support for the “correct” candidates. Finally, ethnic identity in Russia

had been highly politicized during Soviet rule. Governors of ethnic republics and

autonomous regions could depend on the support of their coethnics, even without

extensive monitoring.

Political machines were generally stronger and more successful in regions where

governors had more control of the economy, had access to politicized ethnic networks,

and benefitted from low development, high populations, and low competition. Governors

of these regions were able to utilize their machines to increase the vote share won by their

preferred Duma candidates in 1999—a measure of machine strength that avoids

tautologically associating low competition with an effective machine. Bosses who

belonged to the titular ethnic group of one of Russia’s ethnic republic regions reaped

significant clientelistic gains. Regions where the government exercised a high level of

control over the economy (the proportion of the population that received state pensions),

and managed the economy well (the reduction in wage arrears) also had stronger political

machines. Governors appear to have “negative coat-tails” (pg. 244) when they stand for

election. There is a probability that they will lose and be unable to fulfill promises and

threats, so clientelistic governors’ preferred candidates receive less support. Governors

who were able to effectively navigate political competition as the first speakers of

regional parliaments or who had experience in politicizing rural economies as the

directors of state or collective farms had particularly effective political machines. A

strong agricultural workforce and a long distance from Moscow—indicators of

underdevelopment—cause a rise in clientelism. Somewhat surprisingly, however, wealth

and population are both positively associated with effective political machines. Hale

speculates that, because even the wealthiest regions of Russia lack high enough income

levels to make clientelistic goods unappealing, higher per capita incomes provide more

resources for governments to distribute as patronage without raising opposition to

clientelism. Meanwhile, larger populations may give regions an advantage in bargaining

for federal funds that can be used to reward supporters.

The patterns of clientelism in post-Soviet Russia are likely to exist in some other post-Soviet states. Although economic development may eventually erode clientelistic linkages in the more advanced states of Central Europe and the Baltic states, the developmental disparities between post-Soviet countries are not yet pronounced enough to explain variations in clientelism. Hale believes that instead “the greatest divergence among postcommunist countries in the shorter run is likely to involve variation in the levels of political competitiveness and control over the political economy” (pg. 247). Regimes characterized by a “patrimonial” style of communism with “vertical chains of dependence, extensive patronage and clientelistic networks, personality cults, low rational-bureaucratic institutionalization, and low tolerance for opposition” (pg. 247) tend to have more powerful political machines than institutionalized but totalitarian “bureaucratic-authoritarian” and relatively liberal “national-accommodative” regimes. Following the transition from communism, patrimonial regimes tended to adopt institutions that favored incumbents and embarked on less sweeping privatization and economic liberalization: they have more politicized economies and less political competition. As a result, Hale argues, they are more likely to have nonpartisan political machines: all 12 postcommunist legislatures that contained independent members of parliament had patrimonial regimes. In these countries, including Russia, patronage may flow through nonpartisan political machines that act as “party substitutes” and eschew any programmatic content. The patterns predicted by Kitschelt and Wilkinson—that clientelism will occur when political competition and economic development are low,

state control of the economy is high, and ethnicity is politicized—generally hold true in the postcommunist Russia of the 1990s, and they are likely to hold true in other postcommunist countries that share the institutional legacy of patrimonial communism.