Clientelistic Parties Research Articles

Policy Commitment as Voter Mobilization Strategy: Clientelist Parties, Interest Groups, and Abortion Policy in Subnational Mexico

Existing research contends that clientelist parties seek alternative voter mobilization strategies when material exchanges no longer guarantee office. This article argues that engaging in strategic interactions with influential interest groups constitutes an alternative way to mobilize support. Pressured by competition, clientelist parties align policy with interest group preferences and obtain support from members and followers in return. Using a comparative subnational design and primary data, I show how Mexico’s PRI passed a restrictive abortion amendment to obtain clergy support in Yucatán but abstained from reform in Hidalgo where it faced similar competition but perceived clergy as unable to bolster votes. The findings shed light on clientelist parties’ voter mobilization strategies and the policy effects of interest group interactions in new democracies and other developing contexts.

Exploring the edges of clientelism: ideology, ethnicity, and partisanship in Belize

ABSTRACT Studies focusing on Belize reveal that clientelism is the glue that makes the party system stick. We explore whether ideology and ethnicity account for partisanship within that deeply clientelist setting. We use four AmericasBarometer survey waves by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to study the individual-level correlates of partisan attachments with the People’s United Party (PUP) and United Democratic Party (UDP). Using binary and multinomial probit maximum likelihood estimators, we find that ethnicity correlates to partisanship with the PUP, and ideology correlates to partisanship with the UDP. The robustness checks, which focus on declared vote choices in previous national elections, corroborate our findings. The Belizean case shows how clientelist parties can develop alternative support sources and that these can vary substantially.

Constituency Focus in Party‐Centered Systems: How Individual, Party, and District‐Level Factors Shape Parliamentary Questions in South Africa

What drives MPs' constituency focus in party‐centered systems? Party‐centered systems are expected to offer fewer incentives for constituency‐focused behavior as it is parties rather than candidates that primarily drive competition. However, MPs in these systems may find good reason to cater to constituents’ interests as it allows them to attain multiple goals and satisfy competing principals. This study develops a theoretical model of constituency focus comprising individual, party, and district‐level factors and tests it in South Africa, a party‐centered system. Drawing on 22,724 questions submitted by MPs to the parliament between 2006 and 2023, as well as biographic data and interviews, it demonstrates that variation in MPs' constituency focus is explained by their level of electoral vulnerability, and to a lesser degree their seniority and local ties. Moreover, whether MPs belong to clientelistic parties and their constituency is a party stronghold are also relevant factors. The findings highlight the importance of incentives that go beyond electoral institutions and reaffirm the relevance of constituency links in party‐centered systems.

How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities

How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities

Incentivizing Brokers in Clientelist Parties

Incentivizing Brokers in Clientelist Parties

Poverty, Partisanship, and Vote Buying in Latin America

ABSTRACTElectoral contests in Latin America are often characterized by attempts by political parties to sway the outcome of elections using vote buying—a practice that seems to persist during elections throughout the region. This article examines how clientelist parties’ use of vote buying is jointly shaped by two voter traits: poverty and partisanship. We hypothesize that clientelist parties pursue a mixed strategy, broadly targeting their core voters but also poor swing voters. While most of the existing evidence comes from single-country studies, this study adds cross-national evidence from multilevel regressions of survey data from 22 Latin American countries. Empirically, we find that poverty matters mainly for swing voters. For partisans, the effect of poverty on vote buying is weaker. These results suggest that poverty plays an important role in vote-buying strategies—but also that partisanship moderates clientelistic parties’ vote-buying strategies during electoral campaigns.

Why programmatic parties reduce criminal violence: Theory and evidence from Brazil

Extensive research suggests that electoral competition and power alternations increase violence in weakly institutionalized democracies. Yet, little is known about how political parties affect violence and security. We theorize that the type of party strengthened in elections shapes security outcomes and argue that the rise of programmatic parties, at the expense of clientelistic parties, can significantly reduce violence. In contexts of large-scale criminal violence, programmatic parties are less likely to establish alliances with coercive actors because they possess fewer incentives and greater coordination capacity. Focusing on Brazil, we use a regression discontinuity design that leverages the as-if random assignment of election winners across three rounds of mayoral races. We find that violent crime decreased in municipalities where programmatic parties won coin-flip elections, while it increased in those where clientelistic parties triumphed. Our findings suggest that whether electoral competition increases violence depends on the type of party that wins elections.

Uma Nova Classificação Ideológica dos Partidos Políticos Brasileiros

ABSTRACT Just as democratic politics changes, so does the perception about the parties out of which it is composed. This paper’s main purpose is to provide a new and updated ideological classification of Brazilian political parties. To do so, we applied a survey to political scientists in 2018, asking them to position each party on a left-right continuum and, additionally, to indicate their major goal: to pursue votes, government offices, or policy issues. Our findings indicate a centrifugal force acting upon the party system, pushing most parties to the right. Furthermore, we show a prevalence of patronage and clientelistic parties, which emphasize votes and offices rather than policy.

Power-Sharing, Presidential Style: Issue Salience and Portfolio Allocation in Multiparty Presidential Systems

Minority presidents form coalitions to secure legislative support. However, such support comes at the policy cost of delegating power to coalition partners. Given this dilemma, how do presidents decide on portfolio allocation? The argument is that presidents consider ministries' policy relevance and the characteristics of coalition parties when distributing positions. The president will allocate the most important ministries to aligned ministers (seeking policy control) and to the larger coalition parties (seeking legislative support), distributing the least policy-relevant ministries to clientelist parties. The article presents an original measure for policy salience based on topic modeling of presidential addresses and conditional logit models to test the hypotheses. The analysis consists of a comparative study of Brazil, Chile, and Colombia over 24 years. Results indicate that presidents use salience to sort ministries and decide portfolio allocation. This evidence for the president-specific salience argument shows the relevance of considering the qualitative aspects of portfolio allocation in multiparty presidential systems and how presidents share power with coalition partners without losing control over governmental decisions.

The impact of party-constituent relationships on executive and legislative influence over policymaking

In this analysis, we examine the effect of party-voter linkages on executive and legislative influence over policymaking in democracies throughout the world. We expect committees in legislatures with programmatic parties to have more power over the public policymaking process than committees in legislatures with clientelistic parties. We also expect executives in countries with programmatic parties to have less power over the public policymaking process than executives in countries with clientelistic parties. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy Dataset and controlling for relevant factors, we find support for our expectations. The results of this paper shed light on how party linkages to constituents can affect executive and legislative influence over policymaking.

When Clientelism Backfires: Vote Buying, Democratic Attitudes, and Electoral Retaliation in Latin America

Attempting to buy votes is, in some cases, inefficient and damaging to a clientelistic party. To explain why, we propose the concept of electoral retaliation: sanctioning clientelistic parties by voting against them or intentionally invalidating the ballot. These forms of negative reciprocity are meant to uphold the democratic norms—equal participation, popular sovereignty, electoral fairness—that vote buying undermines. Electoral retaliation is, we theorize, the domain of “democrats.” Thus, we expect voters who highly value democratic norms to be most likely to retaliate against vote-buying parties. We test our theory’s observable implications with a research design that pairs case study and subnational evidence from Argentina with cross-national evidence from Latin America. Results are consistent with the notion that when clientelistic parties target democrats, it is likely to backfire on the machine. Our analyses examine multiple indicators of democratic support, explore causal mechanisms, conduct placebo tests, and seek to rule out various forms of selection bias.

Does clientelism hinder progressive social policy in Latin America?

Latin American welfare systems are truncated and marked by regressive spending patterns. Contributing an electoral microfoundation for the endurance of narrow social policies in the region, we argue that clientelism hollows out support for welfare progressivity. On the one hand, clientelism distorts the link between the vested interest of low-income earners and redistributive policies so that the poor are more likely to support parties with a residualistic social policy agenda; by paying off the poor in return for their vote, clientelistic parties gain greater leverage to pursue liberal social policies. On the other, clientelism induces uncertainty in the provision of public goods among middle and high-income earners, which makes them more likely to opt for residualistic social policies as well. We investigate how clientelism influences electoral support for parties with residualistic social policy platforms by merging information on party strategies from an expert survey with public opinion data for Latin America. Findings confirm that clientelistic practices have an impact on the electoral support for political parties which promote a liberal welfare state.

The Opposition Bloc in Ukraine: A Clientelistic Party with Diminished Administrative Resources

Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc, despite its importance, has attracted little scholarly attention. This study discusses the Opposition Bloc’s genesis, internal struggles, and attempts to extend its influence. Although the Opposition Bloc originated from the remnants of the Party of Regions, some deputies from that party distanced themselves from the late leadership of Viktor Yanukovych, a development that led to the emergence of the Opposition Bloc. Additionally, the Opposition Bloc has endured internal party struggles, a development reflected in the party’s relationships with its financial patrons. This study also examines the Opposition Bloc’s failures to develop its influence in some areas, particularly focusing on the Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.

Small-Time Clientelism

Small-Time Clientelism

How Clientelistic Parties Go Programmatic: The Strategic Logic of Responsiveness in a Least Likely Case (the AKP of Turkey)

Policymakers in democratic systems are expected to respond to the issue preferences of citizens and fulfill their electoral mandate as this responsiveness is central to democratic theory. Most empirical research on opinion-policy/program-policy linkage found a significant relationship between opinion and policy as well as program and policy. However, these studies have concentrated on a few developed Western countries with programmatic party systems. I focus on an emerging democracy with a highly clientelistic party system, Turkey, and address the following questions: Are policymakers' priorities driven by public opinion? Do parties take into account their electoral mandate in the legislature? To answer these questions, I use a novel dataset of parliamentary activities and public priorities in Turkey. I also offer an alternative method to measure party priorities which proves superior to the currently used measures.

Cash transfers, clientelism, and political enfranchisement: Evidence from Brazil

Cash transfers, clientelism, and political enfranchisement: Evidence from Brazil

POPULIST RESURGENCE IN SOUTH ASIA: AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE

Envisioning of populism as the charismatic mobilization of mass people in pursuit of political power, this Element examines that populists burgeon where ties between voters and either bureaucratic or clientelistic parties do not exist or have decayed. This is because populists’ ability to mobilize electoral support directly is made much more likely by voters not being deeply embedded in existing party networks. This model is used to explain the pervasiveness of populism across the major states in South Asia: Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Srilanka. It excerpts lessons from these South Asian cases for the study of populism.

Do clientelistic machines affect electoral outcomes? Mayoral incumbency as a proxy for machine prowess

Do clientelistic machines affect electoral outcomes? Mayoral incumbency as a proxy for machine prowess

Clientelistic parties and satisfaction with democracy

Using both a cross-national data set on parties’ accountability strategies and public opinion survey data, this article provides a systematic analysis of how parties’ reliance on clientelistic stra...

Three Worlds of Representation: A Linkage-Based Typology of Parties in Western and Eastern Europe

This article is part of the special cluster titled Parties and Democratic Linkage in Post-Communist Europe, guest edited by Lori Thorlakson, and will be published in the August 2018 issue of EEPS Have Eastern European democracies developed patterns of accountability similar to those existent in their established counterparts? While most accounts of convergence are confined to the world of programmatic reasoning and policy representation, we use a unique data set to cover the wealth of instrumental and emotional modes of linkage building. We apply advanced techniques of model-based cluster analysis to establish a linkage-based typology of political parties. In the East, the contrast of programmatic and clientelistic parties is most essential in the absence of strong regional subdivisions. In the West, the structure of linkage building is characterized by an all-encompassing divide that separates mainstream and challenger parties. Parties in Southern Europe form a distinct Mediterranean type of “machine politics.” The results for affluent post-industrial societies both support and contradict premises of the cartel party hypothesis. For third-wave democracies in the East, our results suggest the persistence of legacies of pre-communist and communist rule against the weight of cumulative democratic experience. In sum, patterns of accountability remained markedly different in the two regions on the eve of the economic crisis in 2008–2009.