Demanding Recognition: Citizen Perspectives of Clientelism in Africa

• In Event: The Role of Culture and Informal Institutions in Politics and Society

Abstract

Why do citizens engage in political clientelism, and how do they understand their role in patronage exchanges? Existing scholarship provides two explanations. Structural explanations suggest that citizens respond to environments of scarcity, and use clientelism as a way to secure livelihoods. Political economy explanations suggest that citizens make strategic calculations about goods and service distribution, and engage in political clientelism because it provides them the best opportunity to secure their interests. While both explanations find empirical support in sub-Saharan Africa, they overlook a key component of political clientelism: the demand for social and cultural recognition. Drawing from three diverse African contexts to extend our inferential scope – urban Ghana, coastal Kenya, and rural Senegal – we suggest that political clientelism provides an avenue of social recognition, or the acknowledgement of one’s identity and dignity as a human being. The concepts of loyalty, betrayal, and autonomy are central to our understanding of political clientelism as social recognition, which are embedded in a specific cultural context. Citizens note the importance of being respected; being treated as persons; not feeling forgotten; having social bonds with leaders; and feeling part of a broader political family. The paper takes an interpretivist approach, building on ethnography, interviews and focus groups conducted over many years of field research, to focus on the way that citizens make meaning from their relationships with politicians.

Authors

• Kathleen Klaus, University of San Francisco

• Jeffrey W. Paller, University of San Francisco

• Martha Wilfahrt, University of California, Berkeley