2 - The Microfoundations of Political Clientelism

Summary

The logic of perverse incentives implies that candidates are rewarded based on the number of voters they mobilize regardless of the strategies they employ to achieve their goal. Candidates interested in pursuing a political career have to demonstrate their ability to get votes for the party. The more votes a candidate manages to provide for the party, the more likely he or she is to be promoted. The testimony of Mario, a party candidate in Buenos Aires, explains this logic sharply:

This is very simple. You are worth as much as the amount of people you can mobilize. You have a prize, a number. Your number is how many people you can carry to a rally and how many votes you can give in an election. I tell you, what you need to do is simple. How you do it, that is strategy.

Building on these incentives, existing explanations assume that all candidates capable of using clientelism will do so and thus fail to shed light on cases in which candidates forgo the use of clientelism. This chapter argues that, beyond being capable of using clientelism, candidates also have to prefer using clientelistic strategies. I claim that a party candidate's capacity to turn to clientelistic strategies of mobilization is a necessary but insufficient condition to explain the use of clientelism. Besides having the capacity to employ clientelistic strategies, party candidates have to prefer to build clientelistic linkages with voters. In questioning the central assumption in the literature, this chapter contributes to building the microfoundations of clientelism by advancing a distinction between a candidate's capacity and a candidate's preference to use clientelism.

Choosing Clientelism

A candidate's decision to use clientelism to mobilize voters will vary according to his or her capacity and preference to use clientelism. A candidate's capacity to use clientelistic strategies of mobilization varies depending on his or her access to resources and the existence of a network of party activists who contribute to distributing those goods to voters who are likely to turn out and support the candidate.