Clientelistic Relationships Research Articles

Identifying clientelism in orphanages: a conceptual model

ABSTRACT Much has been written on the factors that contribute to a child’s admission into institutional care, including poverty, lack of access to education, death of a parent, active recruitment, and the sheer presence of orphanages. In addition, there is growing recognition of orphanage trafficking driving admission. This is more prevalent in unregulated orphanages (Van Doore 2016), where referral to a specific facility occurs outside of formal gatekeeping mechanisms and without the involvement of mandated authorities. Yet there is little research about how children are identified, recruited, and transferred into these orphanages. The irregular nature of admission, coupled with the fact that these orphanages are rarely proximal to the children’s communities of origin, suggests the involvement of social networks in forging connections between families and specific orphanages. However, the nature of these social networks has not been examined. Missing from the current conceptualisation of drivers of child institutionalisation is the role of social networks, specifically those characterised as clientelist in facilitating children’s recruitment, transfer, admission, and/or trafficking into unregulated orphanages. To address this gap, this article presents a conceptual model for identifying clientelist relationships in orphanages, allowing for the implications of clientelism for child institutionalisation, trafficking, and exploitation to be explored.

Dynamics of regionalization and repercussions of gaps in care on health marketing in remote rural municipalities

This article analyzed the dynamics of regionalization in municipalities within hinterlands and the possible implications of gaps in care for the marketing of health. This is a multiple case study with a qualitative approach, involving 76 semi-structured interviews with municipal, regional, and state managers. The results show that, particularly in the Northern states, the regional scheme did not reflect the social dynamics of the populations and created inadequate flows and unwanted routes. The municipal political agenda often prioritized interests other than that of regionalization, and rural problems did not mobilize managers to build specific regional planning. Parliamentary amendments were essential for investment in healthcare and the managers pointed to clientelistic relationships to obtain such resources, often conditioned by political-ideological alignment. The scarcity of public services favored dependence on the private sector and the commercialization of health in different situations. The great distances and the lack of public services in municipalities in the hinterland made the local public health system offer eminently dependent on contracts with private providers who negotiated on a retail basis or via service packages. Lastly, in the wake of unmet needs and gaps in care in remote rural municipalities, players in the healthcare market ₋ companies supplying inputs, consultants, healthcare professionals, and transportation services ₋ filled the gaps in public provision, sometimes controlling prices, supply and availability of services.

Who spends what, and why? The constituency project fund and electoral politics in Ghana

Ghana's version of MPs Constituency Project Fund is a component of the District Assemblies Common Fund, introduced in 1993. Since its introduction however, no steps have been taken to ensure efficient use of the fund, thus justifying assertions that it is often used as a tool for rent-seeking and perpetuating clientelist relationships. This paper examined how MPs in selected constituencies in Ghana used the fund between 2013 and 2016, and what impact the expenditure had on their performances in the 2016 parliamentary elections. It was found that the MPs were more inclined towards spending their constituency project fund on the personal needs of constituents. However, the findings do not show that the expenditure of the MPsCPF has a significant impact on electoral fortunes of an incumbent MP. While shedding light on an aspect of Ghanaian voter behavior, the study highlights the clientelist motivations underpinning legislative spending in Ghana and emphasizes the need for appropriate laws to regulate the use of the MPsCPF, and empowering the local government system to perform its functions effectively.

Challenges of urban informality in Indian smart cities

India's smart cities initiative signals a clear turn towards the corporatisation of urban governance by entrusting planning responsibilities to special purpose vehicles (SPV) constituted as public sector companies in place of elected municipal governments. This commentary argues that the depoliticised approach of the SPV-driven smart city plans could be detrimental to the informal economy in the long run. Municipal politics has been a useful platform for the urban poor to negotiate their claims over the city, as there is a clientelistic relationship between urban informality and political actors. The scope for such negotiations has considerably shrunk in smart cities, with elite coalition bureaucrats and technocrats steering planning decisions.

Failed Intelligence Reform, State Capture, and Authoritarian Turn in Serbia

Two decades after the overthrow of the autocratic regime of Slobodan Milosevic, security intelligence agencies in Serbia are not only far from being reformed, but they play a central role in democracy decline and what many academics and policy officials describe as state capture. Intelligence agencies are among the first victims of state capture and among the major instruments in further capturing state institutions. This process has been a product of the agreed transition from autocracy to democracy that prevented bloodshed but maintained a clientelist relationship between (new) democratic leadership and the (old) security apparatus. Consequently, thorough intelligence reform never happened, resulting in the survival of agencies’ strongholds of power, which facilitated the return to old secret police practice. It is not uncommon today that among important tasks of security intelligence are regime protection through suppression of political opposition and critical voices, as well as making sure that suspicious deals of those close to the ruling party run smoothly. This article aims to map and analyze events and processes that have led to these outcomes and describe how security intelligence is being instrumentalized by the ruling political party and its leader, Aleksandar Vucic.

Understanding and evaluating populist strategy

Populism describes those strategies which actors endorsing populist ideas must use in order to be considered populist. Typical populist strategies include the hijacking of state institutions; the development of clientelistic relationships with constituencies labelled the people, or employing certain rhetorical moves in which enmity between the people and a corrupt elite looms large. In this paper, I argue against tendencies to define populism according to a specific set of tactics that are supposed to flow directly from populist ideas. Instead, populism should be understood in terms of a particular orientation, which grounds and justifies a range of strategies, all of which – nefarious or otherwise – should be considered populist. This orientation posits that enmity between ‘the people’ and an elite is a defining feature of political life, in part because it is responsible for serious failures in a country’s ostensibly democratic institutions. These failures create a degree of ambivalence with respect to these institutions’ claims to authority and obedience, and generate the perception that political actors thereby enjoy an expanded set of moral permissions. Finally, populists argue that elites prosecute revanchist projects aimed at resisting populist pathways to power and undermining them once in office. Populist strategies then are simply whatever range of tactics political actors use who accept the validity of that above orientation.

Unveiling the Perils – Addressing Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Communist Albania through Enlightened Civic Engagement and Electoral Accountability

This paper provides an overview of the challenges and dynamics surrounding the democratic transition and corruption in Albania over the past 30 years. It highlights the persistent issues of corruption, clientelism, and state capture within the country’s political landscape. Despite continuous reports from international entities and a growing concern regarding democratic developments, the road to European membership remains arduous. The influence of the same political elite and the re-election of corrupt leaders have contributed to the perpetuation of these issues. The prevalence of clientelism during electoral seasons has further complicated matters, with voters often prioritizing personal benefits over national-interest projects. Clientelism and clientelistic relationships put democratic instruments in jeopardy. In post-communist states, political science has had mixed success in discovering strategies to combat clientelism and ensure free and fair elections. In a post-communist society, the relationship between corruption and electoral responsibility is yet unknown. As a result, corrupt politicians continue to get elected over time. This theoretical paper presents a new technique for boosting citizen awareness about the existing situation of corruption and punishing corrupt politicians through voting. The breakdown of clientelistic links based on distributive advantages from rival political parties to citizens is at the heart of this strategy, as is developing a sense of belonging to a political grouping based on shared values and aims.

Party Politics and Local Democracy: The ANC in South Africa’s Cape Winelands

The post-apartheid government in South Africa has provided increased opportunities for public participation at the local government level. Local party politics tend to bedevil these local participatory processes. This paper discusses ANC party politics and how they impact on public participation. It draws on a case study of five municipalities in the Cape Winelands District of the Western Cape that was conducted through semi-structured interviews and secondary data analysis. Local ANC politics has a huge impact on local government structures and their participatory processes. The ANC is a unitary structure in its policy but there is a lack of uniformity in understanding, commitment, and implementation of participatory policies at different levels of the organisation and government spheres. Some deployed public representatives work to advance themselves and their factions, at the expense of the ANC and the communities they are supposed to be leading. The findings of this study have as much significance for civil society as for the local state and its representatives. They show that it is not always the case that the state is bad and civil society is good as leaders of civil society get involved in clientelist relationships and blatant corruption.

Vulnerability and Clientelism

This study argues that economic vulnerability causes citizens to participate in clientelism, a phenomenon with various pernicious consequences. To examine how reduced vulnerability affects citizens’ participation in clientelism, we employ two exogenous shocks to vulnerability. First, we designed a randomized control trial to reduce household vulnerability: our development intervention constructed residential water cisterns in drought-prone areas of Brazil. Second, we exploit rainfall shocks. We find that reducing vulnerability significantly decreases requests for private goods from politicians, especially among citizens likely to be in clientelist relationships. Moreover, reducing vulnerability decreases votes for incumbent mayors, who typically have more resources for clientelism. (JEL D72, H41, I38, O12, O17, Q54)

A saúde como campo de batalha: doenças e artes de curar no Brasil, 1750-1822

Abstract This article explores how diseases were contemplated and faced in Portuguese America in the early 1820s, shortly before the consolidation of the political rupture with Portugal that made Brazil an independent country. It analyzes who the individuals called to treat the diseases of the suffering population were, along with their knowledge and their therapies. To achieve this, we must begin by taking a step back in time, emphasizing the influences of the reforms of the Portuguese Empire on medical knowledge in the second half of the eighteenth century. The first section of the article is dedicated to exploring the complex and multifaceted healing practices in Portuguese America, resulting from the mixtures between traditional concepts about the body and the diseases that were part of the cultural references of the local population. The article then moves on to analyze some of the institutional and political conflicts involved in the consolidation of scientific medicine in Brazil, especially after the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Rio de Janeiro. Despite the political prestige of academic doctors, practitioners of the healing arts had broad support from the population, in addition to finding social mobility in the breaches of clientelistic relationships that marked the political culture of the period.

Health as a battlefield: diseases and the healing arts in Brazil, 1750-1822.

This article explores how diseases were contemplated and faced in Portuguese America in the early 1820s, shortly before the consolidation of the political rupture with Portugal that made Brazil an independent country. It analyzes who the individuals called to treat the diseases of the suffering population were, along with their knowledge and their therapies. To achieve this, we must begin by taking a step back in time, emphasizing the influences of the reforms of the Portuguese Empire on medical knowledge in the second half of the eighteenth century. The first section of the article is dedicated to exploring the complex and multifaceted healing practices in Portuguese America, resulting from the mixtures between traditional concepts about the body and the diseases that were part of the cultural references of the local population. The article then moves on to analyze some of the institutional and political conflicts involved in the consolidation of scientific medicine in Brazil, especially after the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Rio de Janeiro. Despite the political prestige of academic doctors, practitioners of the healing arts had broad support from the population, in addition to finding social mobility in the breaches of clientelistic relationships that marked the political culture of the period.

Democratic Socialism a Solution to Colonial Tourism Structures

The Caribbean’s environmental diversity and tourism products have been a longstanding source of income leading many to argue that the detriments of tourism outweigh its beneficial, economic effects. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic changed the course of travel- and by extension, tourism, countries have been forced to re-evaluate travel structures, means of income and longstanding Clientelist relationships with their North American neighbours. In this commentary, I discuss the socio- economic effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism- in the context of Jamaica; as well as the possibility of re-engineering Democratic Socialism for implementation in the post-pandemic environ- ment as a way to psychologically decolonize the region and alleviate the potentially lingering, devastating effects of the pandemic. Furthermore, while there are other prevalent issues that threaten tourism and have plagued the region for years including and not limited to pollution, environmen- tal degradation, climate change, crime and natural disasters, this analysis is simply intended to focus on identity, economy and the seemingly never-end- ing cycle of Western Imperialism threatening West Indian identity.

Media Policies in Chile and Mexico. A Comparative Analysis in the Context of the Pacific Alliance (2012–2018)

This article presents a comparative study of media policies in Chile and Mexico as members of the Pacific Alliance agreement, using media clientelism as an articulating concept, assuming that it takes a particular form in the neoliberal countries of the continent. For this, five dimensions are compared: a) decrees and the implementation of laws; b) distribution and allocation of broadcasting licenses; c) anti-concentration measures; d) official advertising expenditure and e) governance public media. The results suggest that the institutional structures and inertia that became entrenched under the Chilean dictatorship still perpetuate a clientelistic relationship between the political system and media owners, which is reflected in the government's media policies. In Mexico, despite the progress made in the institutional regulatory design and implementation of media policies, these remain in a state of tension between clientelist practices and liberal democratic design.

Praktik Kewargaan dalam Arena Institusi Informal Era Demokratisasi

Most studies on citizenship have only focus on the practice of citizenship in the context of formal state institutions. On the other hand, there are relatively few studies discussing citizenship practices in informal institutions. Therefore, this study examines the practice of citizenship in Islamic boarding schools/pesantren in the form of bonds as jamaah. This article intends to map the operation of pesantren as a binder of social ties between its citizens, as well as the pattern of relations between kiai and santri. This research shows that pesantren acts as lebenschraum habitus which installs the perceptions and expressions of its citizens. Pesantren is also a locus of power that has a significant influence on political and civic practices. As a locus of power, there is symbolic capital which is represented and reproduced continuously so that the symbolic capital produces economic, social, and cultural capital. The surplus of capital owned by the lora enables them to transform from the habitus of pesantren, to the habitus of political society and the state through the mechanism of electoral democracy. Even though the pesantren with all their supporting elements have a clientelistic relationship pattern, there is a public morality that can be transformed to strengthen the democratization agenda in the future.

Capítulo 12. Democracy and media transparency: systemic failures in greek radio ecosystem and the rise of alternative web radio

Independent and free media are considered to be an essential component of any democratic society. Especially in countries that have been hit hard by the economic crisis and austerity measures, such as Greece, the need for independent journalism to act as watchdog, on behalf of civil society is more important than ever. However, the clientelistic relationships upon which the whole Greek media landscape is built, leaves little room for a journalism that investigates, exposes and holds those in power accountable. It is within this context, we argue, that alternative web radio stations are emerging, taking advantage of the internet technology in order to create bottom-up journalistic initiatives that challenge the current narratives and seek to constitute a new paradigm of journalism. This paper sets out to examine the general characteristics of the Greek media ecosystem but also goes on to examine the particular conditions that led to the current media crisis. It also discusses the legislative framework surrounding Greek media. Finally, this paper aims to provide a brief overview of the alternative web radios that have emerged in the current media ecosystem, by presenting in three Greek alternative web radio stations, describing their basic characteristics, principles, structures and their views on journalistic practices.
 Palabras clave: media transparency, radio, television, web radio.

Varieties of Clientelism in Comparative Democracies: Power, State Formation and Citizenship in the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract Clientelism in comparative democracies have evolved through time within informal and formal institutions. Using the book by Brkovic, that follows the tradition of challenging the unidimensional view of clientelism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this essay provides the Philippine case as contrast and comparison. The article examines how both countries’ experience can open new avenues for us to understand the durability of clientelism and its relationship with formal and informal institutions. Brokovic’s agency and personhood within clientelistic relationships accounts for the endurance of this practice in democratic societies that experienced transition. Clientelism persists in part due to the reliability of personal relations over the ability of public institutions to deliver. This review article will probe clientelism, as it manifests in the politics of the Philippines and its democratic institutions. Among the multiple types of clientelistic relationship in the Philippines, some emphasize the role of machine politics, corruption, and coercion. Brković’s book provides a new lens of analysis by looking at clientelism through personhood and agency as power. The contribution of the book on the discourse of clientelism can deepen the understanding of Philippine politics because it encourages an analysis that looks at the exercise of democracy through personhood, agency, and informal institutions. It invites us to view clientelism not just through corruption and violence. By combining the analysis that utilizes formal and informal institutions, personhood and structuralist, this essay explains why some countries that have transitioned into democracies remain ambiguous states and explain the persistence of clientelism.

A política de contratação de professores temporários na rede municipal de ensino de Cametá (Pará, Brasil, 2013-2020)

Objetiva-se analisar a política de contratação de professores temporários na rede municipal de ensino de Cametá durante as duas últimas gestões municipais (2013–2020). O foco central da pesquisa é a investigação das interfaces entre disputa pelo poder político local (municipal) e a gestão educacional. Trata-se de um estudo de caso em abordagem qualitativa, tendo como procedimentos de coleta de dados análise documental, entrevistas, observação participante e aplicação de questionário fechado (survey). Nosso referencial teórico pautou-se em pressupostos da antropologia da política, tendo o conceito clientelismo como categoria analítica central, bem como ancorou-se em literatura que privilegia estudos realizados a partir do município. Os resultados indicam que a prática de contratação de professores temporários em Cametá incide majoritariamente em escolas da zona rural, sendo pautada em relações de natureza clientelista envolvendo diversos atores, sobretudo vereadores, professores temporários e diretores de escola. Ademais, observou-se a precarização do trabalho docente dos temporários, com atrasos salariais recorrenetes e meses trabalhados sem receber, sendo a atuação do ministério público insuficiente diante de um cenário de inobservância do arcabouço legal que regula o magistério.

Pork Belly Politics: The Moral and Instrumental Reasons Clients Donate to Patrons in a Rural Colombian Mayoral Election

Why, in the context of a rural Colombian mayoral election, do poor clients donate goods and services to political campaigns? The literature on clientelism describes it as a political order in which politicians exchange resources or favors for political support. In this article, I describe the clientelist relationships and exchanges in a 2019 rural Colombian mayoral election, including what I call pork belly politics, where poor clients also donate scarce resources—most notably crispy fried pork belly—to patrons. Based on eleven months of ethnographic and interview data from before, during, and after the campaign, I show that elections are a crucial time for the rural poor to position themselves vis-a-vis the future mayor. Further, I show that the practices I describe are simultaneously instrumental, calculated to guarantee their access to needed public resources for the four-year term, and moral, rooted in a broader political culture based on norms of reciprocity. I explain the three levels of clientelist relationships that emerge during campaigns, and the practices and expectations at play in each. These findings add new depth to our understanding of rural politics and poverty, client agency, and the moral and instrumental dimensions of clientelist exchanges.

The origins and consequences of regional parties and subnationalism in India

ABSTRACT This article explores the origins and consequences of India’s regional parties and subnationalism, focusing and expanding on the key arguments made by Prerna Singh and Adam Ziegfeld in their books. According to Singh, when political leaders promote an inclusive form of subnationalism, it creates a feeling of cohesive solidarity across the region, which helps to achieve superior social welfare outcomes in the Indian states. Ziegfeld provides an elite-centered explanation for the emergence and success of India’s regional parties, and considers Indian politics to be dominated by clientelistic relationships between parties and voters, which leads to delivery of particularistic rather than public goods. The article also discusses two key themes emerging from the books relating to the importance of subnational versus national identity, and the significance of interests versus ideas in shaping Indian politics and public policy. Finally, it identifies future areas for research on regional parties and subnationalism in India.

Incomplete Political Contracts with Secret Ballots: Reciprocity as a Force to Enforce Sustainable Clientelistic Relationships

Abstract Clientelism is frequently observed in our societies. Various mechanisms that help sustain incomplete political contracts (e.g., monitoring and punishment) have been studied in the literature to date. However, do such contracts emerge in elections with secret ballots when the interactions are one-shot? How does repetition affect the evolution of incomplete political contracts? Using an incentivized experiment, this article finds that even during one-shot interactions where monitoring is not possible, candidates form incomplete contracts through vote buying and promise-making. The candidates’ clientelistic behaviors are heterogeneous: some target swing voters, whereas others offer the most to loyal voters, or even opposition voters. These tactics distort voting behaviors as well as election outcomes. Repeated interactions significantly magnify candidates’ offers and deepen clientelistic relationships. These results underscore the possibility that clientelism evolves due to people’s strategic behaviors and interdependent preferences, without relying on alternative mechanisms (JEL C92, D72).