Clientelism and Development

• In Event: Clientelist Politics and Development

Abstract

We expect clientelist parties – those that mobilize electoral support by offering individuals discrete benefits, and by threatening to withhold such benefits – to behave differently than programmatic parties, once in office. This expectation is driven by the assumption that elected officials devote their time and energy in office to activities that will help get them or their parties reelected. Office holders who have won elections by promising, for instance, more public works projects or specific policy goals, will try to make good on these commitments as they look ahead to their next election. Though it is a matter of debate whether and to what degree office-holders actually behave in this manner, it would be rash to discard this assumption entirely.

What are our expectations about the behavior of incumbents whose victory relied on the distribution of goods to individual voters, in a semi-quid pro quo relationship? One expectation is that these office-holders will be relatively untethered by public-policy promises. At an extreme, they can do whatever they want in office – engage in massive corruption, use their position to help their friends, curry the favor of wealthy actors – since their reelection campaigns will involve proffering what are, in effect, bribes to voters. Since good behavior is a public good, and since the impact of any given vote on the outcome of an election is, in expectation, vanishingly small, the voter who supports her candidate or party on the basis of having received individualized largesse has no incentive to risk giving up that largesse in favor of public goods like good government or favorable public policy.

Some clientelist parties or machines conform to this grim picture. The history of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) in power in the Mezzogiorno of Italy, in the middle decades of the 20th century, was one of mal-governance, patronage, and clientelism. What’s more, since clientelism relies on political machines, clientelist parties in office use public employment to help build and maintain their party organizations – another factor that militates against good governance. Italy in the heyday of the PDC offers many examples, as do Argentine localities under Peronist rule, Mexican ones in the era of the PRI, and others.
Yet, I will argue, clientelist parties are not entirely free of pressure to enact public policies that aid their constituents. And since their constituents tend to be poor, there can be some pro-development pressures at work in clientelist systems. Why would this be so?

The reason is that the image of the voter entirely captured by quid-pro-quo relations with the local party machine is not entirely accurate. The preference of many low-income voters is to garner individualized benefits from candidates but also to elect parties that will undertake public policies that are good for them. Such voters also would prefer, if possible, to support parties that offer them – in addition to a handout – dignity and a chance for a better future for their children. Of course, if no such party exists, poor voters will fall prey to very low expectations.

But history is replete with political machines that also developed a party brand as a champion of the poor in a broader sense. One example is Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina. Perón led a political party that would for decades enmesh voters in clientelist deals. But he (and his wife and associates) also extolled the poor masses, and enacted pro-poor public policies, such as increasing workers’ wages and improving infrastructure. Neither of these goals would have been necessary if Peronism had been a strictly clientelist party machine on the Italian PDC model.

This essay explores the incentives clientelist machines experience to undertake developmental and pro-poor policies; the legislative and executive behavior of such parties; and how their behavior in office contrasts with (or parallels) the behavior of non-clientelist parties. The general assumption has been that pro-poor policies are achieved when programmatic parties that favor redistributive models of development eclipse clientelist machines. (An example, many would argue, was Brazil, when the Workers Party (PT) displaced more clientelistic predecessors, such as the PMDB.) Guided by this assumption, perhaps we have overlooked developmental achievements of clientelist parties.

Another key question is whether clientelist parties, in office, tend toward populism as a method of satisfying their low-income constituents desires for dignity and growth. The rise of populist parties and figures in a wide range of regions of late has produced more examples of right-wing populism, yet the history of populism, in particular in Latin America, tends instead toward a left-wing version, with promises of economic redistribution are at its core. Is populism the policy-oriented face of clientelism?

Author

• Susan C. Stokes, University of Chicago