Marcelo Nazareno

Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: Between Clients and Citizens: Puzzles and Concepts in the Study of Distributive Politics

Markets distribute goods. The drive to earn and to consume moves steel from Anshan to Minnesota, nannies from Brixton to Hampstead, and credit from Wall Street to Athens. Indeed, the movement of steel, nannies, and credit is in a sense what markets – for goods, services, and finance – are . Politics also distributes goods. Government programs channel cash, jobs, credit, and myriad other resources to citizens; elected officials mete out benefits to favored constituencies; and political parties distribute everything from leaflets to liquor in search of votes. And taxes and transfers redistribute income. The political distribution of goods is more controversial than is their distribution through markets. We expect markets to move valued resources across space and populations. But while few would object to all forms of political distribution, nearly all would object to some forms of it. In any democracy there is broad agreement (though not consensus) that political authority rightly transfers resources across generations by using tax proceeds to fund the education of children or protect of the elderly from penury. Agreement about redistribution through social welfare programs and insurance against social risk is also broad, though far from universal. However, other kinds of political distribution and redistribution – contracts that go to politically connected private firms, for instance, or cash payments in return for votes – are broadly reviled. Indeed, although some forms of political distribution are unquestioningly accepted, others are punishable with prison terms.

Clientelism and Poverty

INTRODUCTION: POVERTY OF NATIONS AND OF VOTERS Part II of this book constructs a model of clientelism that pivots around the behavior of types of individuals – party leaders, brokers, and voters. Part III examines macro-dynamics of clientelism: why it persists and what forces may undermine it, with an emphasis on historical developments at the national level. The current chapter marks a transition between micro and macro concerns. Here we study the link between clientelism and poverty. The broker-mediated model in Chapter 3 included assumptions about how wealthy and poor voters differ in the utility they derive from expressions of political loyalties and from money. These assumptions, and what may lie behind them, are our focus here. The national experiences of shifts from clientelism to nonconditional distribution, to pork-barrel politics, and even to programmatic distribution, explored in Part III, have much to do with changes in income levels and in income distribution. Hence, before shifting to these accounts, it is helpful to pause and examine more closely the evidence about poverty and clientelism. Imagine drawing a country at random from a list of all those in which competitive national elections are regularly held. If one had to guess whether clientelism was widely practiced in the country selected, ones guess would probably be improved by knowing how wealthy the country is – its per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and income distribution.