Combining clientelist and programmatic politics in Tamil Nadu, South India

Abstract

This article examines the use of material appeals for voter support using evidence taken from the case of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Two types of material appeal co-exist in this case. Clientelist politics, in the form of vote buying, and the distribution of public resources as political patronage, are features of state politics. Parties also use programmatic policies which offer benefits to beneficiaries regardless of partisan affiliation. The provision of such universal benefits has expanded since 2006. Yet the interest in universal provision significantly pre-dates 2006 and can be traced back to elite policy preferences in the early 1980s. The article shows that competition within a clientelist political system need not lead to the intensification of clientelism. Political parties may dilute their clientelist strategy by the addition of some programmatic policies. The wider implication of this study is that future research on material appeals should pay more attention to parties and party systems as causal variables.