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Clientelism, Social Policy, and the Quality of Democracy

edited by Diego Abente Brun and Larry Diamond

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World-renowned scholars explore how political clientelism works and evolves in the context of modern developing democracies.

What happens when vote buying becomes a means of social policy? Although one could cynically ask this question just as easily about the United States’s mature democracy, Diego Abente Brun and Larry Diamond ask this question about democracies in the developing world through an assessment of political clientelism, or what is commonly known as patronage.

Studies of political clientelism, whether deployed through traditional vote-buying techniques or through the politicized...

World-renowned scholars explore how political clientelism works and evolves in the context of modern developing democracies.

What happens when vote buying becomes a means of social policy? Although one could cynically ask this question just as easily about the United States’s mature democracy, Diego Abente Brun and Larry Diamond ask this question about democracies in the developing world through an assessment of political clientelism, or what is commonly known as patronage.

Studies of political clientelism, whether deployed through traditional vote-buying techniques or through the politicized use of social spending, were a priority in the 1970s, when democratization efforts around the world flourished. With the rise of the Washington Consensus and neoliberal economic policies during the late-1980s, clientelism studies were moved to the back of the scholarly agenda.

Abente Brun and Diamond invited some of the best social scientists in the field to systematically explore how political clientelism works and evolves in the context of modern developing democracies, with particular reference to social policies aimed at reducing poverty.

Clientelism, Social Policy, and the Quality of Democracy is balanced between a section devoted to understanding clientelism’s infamous effects and history in Latin America and a section that draws out implications for other regions, specifically Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern and Central Europe. These rich and instructive case studies glean larger comparative lessons that can help scholars understand how countries regulate the natural sociological reflex toward clientelistic ties in their quest to build that most elusive of all political structures—a fair, efficient, and accountable state based on impersonal criteria and the rule of law.

In an era when democracy is increasingly snagged on the age-old practice of patronage, students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, democratization, and international development and economics will be interested in this assessment, which calls for the study of better, more efficient, and just governance.

Reviews

Reviews

... Clarifies its overall claim about clientelism, a distorting and arbitrary distributive pattern that could be improved. Those interested in these issues should thus not miss this highly recommendable book.

This collection of essays addresses timely and important themes in political science, sociology, and public policy associated with developing countries. The list of contributors features a nice balance of senior scholars with well-known reputations and junior scholars doing important work.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
288
ISBN
9781421412290
Illustration Description
11 graphs
Table of Contents

Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction. Evaluating Political Clientelism
Part I: Lessons in Clientelism from Latin America
Chapter 1. Partisan Linkages and Social Policy Delivery in Argentina

Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction. Evaluating Political Clientelism
Part I: Lessons in Clientelism from Latin America
Chapter 1. Partisan Linkages and Social Policy Delivery in Argentina and Chile
Chapter 2. Chile's Education Transfers, 2001–2009
Chapter 3. The Future of Peru's Brokered Democracy
Chapter 4. Teachers, Mayors, and the Transformation of Clientelism in Colombia
Chapter 5. Lessons Learned While Studying Clientelistic Politics in the Gray Zone
Chapter 6. Political Clientelism and Social Policy in Brazil
Part II: Lessons in Clientelism from Other Regions
Chapter 7. Patronage, Democracy, and Ethnic Politics in India
Chapter 8. Linking Capital and Countryside: Patronage and Clientelism in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines
Chapter 9. Eastern European Postcommunist Variants of Political Clientelism and Social Policy
Chapter 10. The Democratization of Clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Conclusion: Defining Political Clientelism's Persistence
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Diego Abente Brun

Diego Abente Brun is a senior associate researcher at Centro de Investigación y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya and a senior researcher at CONACYT-Paraguay. He is author or coeditor of several books, including Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy, also published by Johns Hopkins, which he coedited with Larry Diamond.
Featured Contributor

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, codirector of the International Forum for Democratic Studies, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.