Tina Hilgers

Recentering Informality On The Research Agenda: Grassroots Action, Political Parties, and Democratic Governance

Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America. Edited by Patricia Fernandez-Kelly and Jon Shefner. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Pp. 280.

Clientelistic Democracy or Democratic Clientelism

75.00 cloth. Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Edited by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: John Hop kins University Press, 2006. Pp. 351.

Introduction: How Violence Varies: Subnational Place, Identity, and Embeddedness

25.00 paper. Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Edited by Herbert Kitschelt and Steven J. Wilkinson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007 Pp. 377

Mexican Messiah: Andrés Manuel López Obrador (review)

96.00 cloth.

Causes and Consequences of Political Clientelism: Mexico's PRD in Comparative Perspective

The vast literature on clientelism is marked by the struggle to explain the difference between the formal, impersonal. and universally applicable channels and institutions that are identified with democracy in theory—and ostensibly implanted in practice—and the more personalized exchanges (ranging from benign to sinister) that occur in real politics, all efforts to eliminate them to the contrary. Searching for the causes and effects of these exchanges is crucial to understand political realities and to improve the development and practical application of theoretical ideals. However, the concept misformation (to cite Sartori 1970) or—more aptly, in this case—deformation that has occurred in the evolution of research into clientelism does not aid the cause.

Clientelism and conceptual stretching: differentiating among concepts and among analytical levels

Late one night in Quito, Ecuador, two women were held in the office of a jail. One, a pregnant local woman with dark hair and skin, had been found in possession of a drawer full of watches. She covered her face as a police officer repeatedly pepper sprayed and berated her, demanding to know how she came by the watches. He complained that he could not throw her in a cell and be done with her because of her condition. The other woman, a white foreigner, had been arrested outside a nightclub for not carrying valid personal identification. An officer tried to intimidate her, threatening to put her “in the back” with other detainees – “they’ll kill you back there.” She did not take him very seriously and was released when an Ecuadorian friend turned up with cash to pay off the officers.2 This anecdote highlights not only that the police in the Americas (as in many other parts of the world) often behave unethically, but also that (in)security means different things for different people. The officers, although acting outside the regulatory framework of the law, were part of a system of police, political, and judicial collusion that provides corrupt and abusive individuals active and passive protection – the latter through a socio-political history of power over the masses. Democracy has not been able to shift this system of power (see Eaton and Prieto; Müller;

Clientelism in everyday Latin American Politics

This new work is a bibliographical account of Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors life and political career. Graysons research on the topic is detailed and exhaustive, including interviews with 140 individuals from Lopez Obradors past and his present entourage, as well as reviews of local, national, and international news media. The author did not personally speak with the subject of his study, but Lopez Obrador is notorious for his refusal—with rare exceptions—to grant interviews outside his public press conferences. Grayson also provides intimate details of Tabasco and Federal District (D.F.) politics, dynamics inside the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), relations among Mexican parties, and of the political game in and under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).