clientelism, relationship between individuals with unequal economic and social status (“the boss” and his “clients”) that entails the reciprocal exchange of goods and services based on a personal link that is generally perceived in terms of moral obligation.
Defined in this way, clientelism is a phenomenon that has occurred in many different social contexts, be it between patricians and their henchmen in ancient Rome, between lords and their serfs in feudal times, or between large landowners and peasants in numerous rural communities. Clientelistic relations did not disappear with the advent of modern states or their democratization since the end of the 19th century. However, during this process, these relationships have been transformed in two ways. On the one hand, they have acquired a specifically political dimension through their insertion within the institutions of each regime. On the other hand, clientelistic relations have been increasingly denounced as obstacles to the efficiency of these institutions and to the respect of democratic values.
The clientelism of notables
At least initially, the introduction of elections reinforced the power of notables. In the French Third Republic, aristocrats, bourgeois landowners, and industrialists won political office by using their wealth and social standing as means of enhancing their electoral chances. Until the mid-20th century the same phenomenon was commonplace in the peasant communities of southern Europe and for agrarian elites in numerous developing countries. Voting simply reinforced social hierarchies. Votes were “exchanged” for goods or services that could be offered to loyal followers (land, employment, charitable donations, etc.). Democratization thus led to the formation of clientelistic networks that then became the notables’ first political parties.
When mass parties came into being, these notables had to compete with new political entrepreneurs from the middle classes, the professions, and the trade unions. These professional politicians had no patrimony that could be converted into clientelistic resources. Instead, they sought electoral support through spreading the idea that voting and political affiliation should stem from the sharing of convictions, ideology, and the defense of collective interests. To these politicians, the self-interest-driven exchanges that characterized notable clientelism contravened democratic principles and were thus acts of corruption that one had to eradicate in order to moralize public life.
The clientelism of parties and political modernization
However, the increasing specialization of political activity did not bring an end to clientelistic practices. Of course, these were progressively depreciated as the norms of civic citizenship spread and legal sanctions for electoral corruption were put in place. Nevertheless, the expansion of interventions by states and local authorities generated new possibilities for politicians to control public resources and, in so doing, mobilize electoral support. Social policies, urban renewal, and subsidies for economic development could all be used to fuel these “political machines.” Be they in the American cities during the first half of the 20th century or in southern regions of Italy after World War II, these machines coordinated clientelistic distribution of collective goods (housing, jobs, subsidies) on a large scale in order to support local “bosses.”
Some political scientists have gone so far as to use the term clientelistic state to qualify political systems within which a dominant party takes over the bureaucracy, collective goods, and their distribution in order to preserve its hegemony. This analysis has highlighted cases such as the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party, the Japanese Liberal-Democratic Party, and the Italian Christian Democrats, who all remained almost constantly in power between the 1950s and the 1980s. In these cases, clientelistic relations developed within entire sectors (ministries, business organizations, lobbies, trade unions, etc.).
Contrary to what most specialists had predicted until the 1970s, clientelism thus survived the advent of democratic modernization. Until this time, however, clientelistic practices had generally been considered part of a “traditional” stage of political and social evolution, of which peasant societies on the periphery of Europe were considered prime examples. It was thought that urbanization would liberate individuals from community-type dependencies, that education would encourage civic citizenship, and that economic progress would generate social mobility and the uniformization of life chances.
Given the evidence that shows the perennial nature of clientelism even in modernized social contexts, many sociologists and political scientists have since modified their point of view. Clientelism is no longer seen as a relic from tradition but as a sign of malfunctioning democracy and as an anomaly of political systems caused either by a lack of “civic culture” or by the “capture” of institutions by politicians interested only in conserving power. Clientelism has thus come to be seen as a political “pathology,” blocking the emergence of genuine democracy as well as its lasting legitimation.
The unofficial mechanisms of governance
It is incontestable that clientelism goes against the values contemporary democracies claim to uphold. It involves a discretionary usage of public resources, which contradicts the rule of law and the principle of bureaucratic impartiality. Also, it is based upon personalized exchanges and instruments that are antithetical to the ethics of political conviction and disinterested engagement that lie at the heart of the civic ideal. However, the opposition between clientelism and democratic politics is not as clear-cut as it seems. In 1848 it was through a form of “democratic patronage” that local republican elites spread a national political culture throughout the French countryside. Subsequently, mass parties frequently linked the provision of material goods with pedagogical and ideological efforts to ensure the loyalty of their electors and activists. In this case, clientelism was a vector for the formation of partisan identities and the social learning of democratic citizenship. Meanwhile, some state-driven infrastructure projects were carried out through the implication of local politicians, who thereby became mediators between the state and its citizens. The political and administrative networks set up during these projects were used by politicians in order to satisfy the demands of their electors but also to deeply modify public action and the socioeconomic conditions of their respective regions. In such cases, clientelism was an instrument used to foster political and administrative modernization, a process during which the state’s activities were “translated” and adapted to the needs of local societies.
These examples suggest that clientelistic relations are not in complete contradiction to democracy or the bureaucratic logics of institutions. Although official representations of legitimate forms of politics lead clientelism to be discredited, and thus consigned to the realms of the unofficial corridors of power, it nevertheless remains a structuring part of representative democracies.