Patronage Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Patronage is a commonly legal but ethically questionable practice of using state resources to provide jobs and services for political clientele by those in control—the so-called patrons— in return for support. Patronage shares a common factor termed clientelist linkage with other criticized exchanges, such as pork barrel politics and spoils in the bureaucracies of several developing and developed states of the world. In many studies, the terms patronage politics and political clientelism are used interchangeably; in fact, patronage is a form of clientelism.

The established anthropological usage of the clientelism mostly refers to the reciprocal and dyadic exchange between notables and dependents. Its use in political science is distinct because it is not based on traditional roles or socioeconomic dependence. In a clientelist structure, patrons provide access to benefits and favors, and their clients are expected to provide returns politically or otherwise in a reciprocal and asymmetric exchange. The clientelist relationship is asymmetric, as there are more clients than patrons; the relationship is reciprocal because the exchange is essential. There is inequality as a result of the unequal status of wealth and influence of the parties to the exchange.

In political clientelism, political support is traded between voters and politicians in democratic political systems and it is associated with the privileged use of party and public resources. The clients provide political support in the form of voting, working in party organizations, attending party meetings and rallies, distributing propaganda texts, and providing personal help to their patrons or brokers. In modern democratic systems, the clients are in huge numbers and the patrons need “brokers” who act as go-betweens to arrange the exchange of benefits to run the patronage network. The work of the broker links dyadic clientelist relations and contacts between patrons and clients; it thus helps to build the patronage network. The patrons provide benefits and services such as government jobs, public contracts, public or personal loans, funds, and access to better education and health care. Herbert Kitschelt and Steve Wilkonson argue that politicians must decide what resources they can offer to clients in exchange for electoral support. The authors further explain, that to underline the importance of confidence between patrons and clients, politicians “must construct organizational devices and social networks of supervision that make direct individual or indirect group based monitoring of political exchange relations viable” (8).

Patronage refers to the aim of this exchange and it is a limited form of the distribution of benefits and services in exchange for votes in a more apparent method than clientelism. As a limited form of distribution, patronage can be used as a proxy for clientelism. The state and parastate resources are directed toward a particular electorate in exchange for political support. Academic Susan Stokes writes that in patronage, the patron holds public office and distributes state resources; but in clientelism, the patron or broker may or may not hold public office and as a result may or may not be able to realistically promise to secure public resources (opposed to, for instance, party resources) for the client. Political jobbery and state development projects are good examples of patronage. Political scientist Scott Mainwaring argues that patronage can be seen as the primary glue that holds modern clientelism together.

A more restricted definition limits patronage to a particular policy in the distribution of public jobs. Politically motivated groups demand favors in hiring decisions for public employees: in 1990, Robin Theobald cited an estimate of four million patronage positions in state and local government in the United States through the early 1980s.

The general conclusion is that power of patron-client networks correlates with the conditions of low productivity, high inequality, starkly hierarchical social relations, political culture, and the size of the public sector economy. Patronage politics dominates the politics and government as a system of patronclient ties and networks, and this contrasts with the norms of universal rationality. It is related to the loosening of moral standards, and thus provides encouraging conditions for corruption with its vast network, which includes politicians and civil servants.

Some scholars argue that the creation of an ideal or rational bureaucracy will be the end of clientelist relations, or at least of patronage. However, patronage changes and adapts to new structures, and thus survives even in developed states. While clientelism and patronage run counter to universalistic standards, several scholars emphasize that patronage politics serve as a tool to mobilize masses, with clientelist relations providing a sense of political participation for the people. If an individual chooses not to be a part of the system, that person will be barred from a distribution network of benefits contrary to the unconditional sharing of public goods. Yet, the patronage mechanism is the best way to access public goods and services in several societies. As Ayse Ayata notes, the patronage system brings flexible solutions oriented toward individual needs, takes private concerns into consideration, and also integrates everyday concerns as public issues. Jorge Gordin adds that it is incorrect to consider patronage as an abnormality in the political system; on the contrary, it would be more realistic and theoretically more productive to consider it as a key element.

Bibliography:

Gordin, Jorge P. “The Political and Partisan Determinants of Patronage in Latin America, 1960–1995: A Comparative Perspective.” European Journal of Political Research 41, no. 4 (2002): 513–549.
Gunes-Ayata, Ayse. “Clientelism: Premodern, Modern, Postmodern.” In Democracy, Clientelism and Civil Society, edited by Luis Roniger and Ayse Gunes-Ayata, 19–28. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994.
Kettering, Sharon. “The Historical Development of Political Clientelism.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 3 (1988): 419–447.
Kitschelt, Herbert and Steven Wilkinson. Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Lemarchand, Rene, and Keith Legg. “Political Clientelism and Development: A Preliminary Analysis.” Comparative Politics 4, no. 2 (1972): 149–178.
Mainwaring, Scott. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Provizer, Norman W. Analyzing the Third World: Essays from Comparative Politics. New Brunswick, N.J.:Transaction, 1978.
Roniger, Luis. “Political Clientelism, Democracy and Market Economy.” Comparative Politics 36, no. 3 (2004): 353–375.
Stokes, Susan Carol. “Political Clientelism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, edited by Carles Boix and Susan Carol Stokes, 604–627. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Theobald, Robin. Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment. London: Macmillan, 1990.

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