https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5459-0785
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ABSTRACT
Clientelistic vote mobilization is a prominent electoral strategy in many of the world’s democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes. Yet the comparative study of this practice, which involves exchanging personal favours for electoral support, remains strikingly underdeveloped. This special issue makes the case that clientelistic politics takes different forms in different countries, and that this variation matters for understanding democracy, elections, and governance. By comparing clientelistic vote mobilization in several countries – Mexico, Ghana, Sudan to Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Caribbean and Pacific Islands states, and Malaysia – we unpack the concept of political clientelism and show that it is possible to identify different types of patronage democracies. In this introductory essay, we develop a comparative framework for this endeavour, showing that clientelism can be fruitfully compared in terms of the character of the networks that facilitate clientelistic exchange, the benefits that politicians offer in exchange for votes, and the degree to which politicians, and especially parties, control the distribution of state resources. These comparisons lead to the identification of different types of patronage democracies, notably community-centred and party-centred varieties. Building on this framework, this special issue shows that the comparative study of clientelistic politics offers analytical promise for scholars of democracy and democratization.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Ward Berenschot http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5459-0785
Edward Aspinall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-298X
Notes
1 The term is especially associated with Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed.
2 Kitschelt and Kselman, “Economic Development, Democratic Experience.”
3 Helmke and Levitsky, “Informal Institutions and Comparative Politics”; Lauth, “Informal Institutions and Democracy.”
4 Examples of such handbooks are Goodin and Klingemann, A New Handbook of Political Science; Goodin and Tilly, Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis. In contrast, Boix and Stokes, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, contains an excellent contribution by Susan Stokes on clientelism which, however, does not provide a framework for comparing different forms of clientelistic vote mobilization.
5 These two workshops took place at KITLV, Leiden, in June 2017 and Yale University, New Haven, in May 2018. We thank all participants, especially Steven Wilkinson as host and insightful discussant at Yale.
6 On the two waves in the study of clientelism, see Stokes, “Political Clientelism.”
7 See, for example, Eisenstadt and Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends.
8 See, for example, Scott, “Erosion of Patron–Client Bonds”; Weingrod, “Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties.”
9 See Hicken, “Clientelism.”
10 There are of course minor differences, but our summary is largely in line with definitions found in Stokes, “Political Clientelism,” 605; Hicken, “Clientelism”; Stokes et al. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, 13; Shefter, Political Parties and the State, 283n3; Kitschelt and Wilkinson, “Citizen-politician Linkages,” 2.
11 Kitschelt, “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians”; Hicken, “Clientelism.”
12 See Hicken and Nathan, “Clientelism’s Red Herrings.”
13 See, for example, Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism; Szwarcberg, Mobilzing Poor Voters.
14 As Auyero put it: “people who receive things know that receiving favors implies a return. Such a return is one of the rules of the game … verbalized only when an explanation is explicitly requested.” Auyero, Poor People's Politics, 160.
15 Hutchcroft, “Linking Capital and Countryside.”
16 For example, Keefer, “Clientelism, Credibility, and Policy Choices”; Kitschelt and Kselman, “Economic Development.”
17 For example, Nichter, “Vote Buying or Turnout Buying?”; Stokes, “Political Clientelism”; Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism.
18 For example, Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, 19.
19 Holland and Palmer-Rubin, “Beyond the Machine”; Arghiros, Democracy, Development and Decentralization; Berenschot, “Informal Democratization.”
20 For example, Brun and Diamond, Clientelism, Social Policy and the Quality of Democracy; Weitz-Shapiro, Curbing Clientelism in Argentina.
21 See Nichter, Votes for Survival.
22 Mares and Young, “Buying, Expropriating, and Stealing Votes.”
23 Holland and Palmer-Rubin, “Beyond the Machine.”
24 On small polities where face-to-face interactions are possible, see Veenendaal, Politics and Democracy in Microstates; on brokerage, see Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism.
25 Kitschelt and Kselman, “Economic Development.”
26 Gould and Fernandez, “Structures of Mediation.”
27 See Aspinall, “When Brokers Betray.”
28 On Argentina, see Auyero, Poor People’s Politics; Swarczberg, Mobilizing Poor Voters; on India see Berenschot, “Conveying Closeness.”
29 See chapter 6 in Aspinall and Berenschot, Democracy for Sale.
30 Beck, Brokering Democracy in Africa.
31 See, for example, Auerbach, “Clients and Communities.”
32 Auyero, Poor People’s Politics; Berenschot, Riot Politics.
33 Shefter, Political Parties and the State.
34 See, for example, Zwart, Bureaucratic Merry-go-round.
35 On the Philippines, see McCoy, An Anarchy of Families; on Kyrgyzstan, see Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition.
36 On Thailand, see Arghiros, Democracy, Development and Decentralization.
37 Riggs, Thailand; Jackson, “Bureaucratic Polity.”
38 See Aspinall and Berenschot, Democracy for Sale.
39 Hale, “Formal Constitutions in Informal Politics.”
40 Driscoll, “Why Political Competition can Increase Patronage.”
41 Stokes, “Perverse Accountability.”
42 Brusco et al., “Vote Buying in Argentina,” 76.
43 For example, De Wit, Urban Poverty.
44 On the latter, see Lust, “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East.”
45 The dataset is available at: https://sites.duke.edu/democracylinkage/. Of course, there is a confounding problem here: patronage democracies are poorer and more unequal, making them more likely to experience regression.
46 Jha et al., Governance in the Gullies.
47 Auerbach, “Clients and Communities”; Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed; Edelman and Mitra, “Slum Dwellers' Access to Basic Amenities.”
48 Berenschot, “Clientelism, Trust Networks, and India's Identity Politics.”
49 See Berenschot, “Informal Democratization.”
50 Stokes et al., Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism, 186; Weitz-Shapiro, Curbing Clientelism in Argentina.
51 Shefter, Political Parties and the State.
52 Here, Dan Slater’s analysis of the patterns of clientelistic cartel politics found in Indonesia is especially relevant: Slater, “Indonesia’s Accountability Trap.”
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Ward Berenschot
Ward Berenschot works at KITLV, The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. He researches informal politics, local democracy, and identity politics in India and Indonesia.
Edward Aspinall
Edward Aspinall is located in the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. His main research focus is Southeast Asian, especially Indonesian, politics.