The Decline of Group-Level Clientelism in Cities: Causes and Consequences

• In Event: Clientelism from the Citizen’s Perspective

Abstract

Politicians in many developing democracies have adopted an efficient form of group-level clientelism in which club goods are exchanged for a bloc of votes in a village or limited geographic area. This strategy is particularly useful in places with weakly institutionalized parties where the machines necessary to enforce individual-level clientelistic exchange are absent. A group-level strategy is facilitated by both the presence of legitimate local leaders who serve as political intermediaries and the ability to monitor local vote tallies using public election results. But because polling station catchment areas in urban places map less well onto discrete geographic areas in a way that makes club goods less excludable, and because traditional local intermediaries are less available or legitimate there, group-level targeting is less feasible in urban areas. As the share of urban voters threatens to overtake the share of rural voters in many developing countries, the fate of group-level clientelism is of particular import: is it indeed less prevalent in cities, what explains its decline, and what strategies will serve as a substitute? To begin to address these questions, I use a combination of data – current and historical as well as qualitative and quantitative, from one quickly urbanizing developing democracy, Senegal, where this group-level clientelistic strategy has historically been described as a key component to electoral politics. First, using use over-time election data paired with census results, I show that bloc voting has always been common in rural precincts – and even more so among places known for stronger local intermediaries, but that bloc voting in urban precincts has declined over time. Second, I take a closer look at the declining usefulness of clientelist politics in one peri-urban area in Senegal as it transitioned from a semi-agricultural backwater to a densely populated urban center. Using historical geo-coded data on neighborhood chiefs, local public goods, and election tallies, I examine how and why clientelistic strategies that were once successful in extracting local public goods from the state are no longer as useful in this urban center. I complement these data with interviews of former and current local political intermediaries from urban Senegal. Finally, I argue that populist strategies have largely replaced clientelistic ones as a means of attracting the urban vote. As evidence, I use current survey data from the same peri-urban area to expose the policy preferences of voters and show how those preferences align with many of the populist policies that were undertaken by the current government, but absent in prior regimes. This study has implications for how and when democracies transition away from clientelistic politics, but also cautions optimism about such transitions increasing accountability by demonstrating the limited benefits of populist strategies.

Author

• Jessica Gottlieb, Texas A&M University