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25 - Machine Politics and Clientelism

from IV - Civil Society: The Roots and Processes of Political Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

By
Manali Desai  and
Rashmi Singh
Edited by
Thomas Janoski ,
Cedric de Leon ,
Joya Misra  and
Isaac William Martin
Thomas Janoski
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Cedric de Leon
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joya Misra
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Isaac William Martin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

The party “machine” is one of the few concepts that has become relevant in the scholarship of widely different political systems, with often divergent normative meanings associated with it. Although the term originated in the turn-of-the-century United States to describe the political structures that evolved in the context of mass migration, scholars have found similarities with party functioning in cases across Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The concept of the party machine has traveled as much geographically as it has theoretically. Starting from its implied roots in immigrant cultural ethos, it came to be employed in a more comparative, institutional, and sequential approach that took into account the timing of bureaucratization, democratization, and the mobilization of the working classes particularly across Europe.

Keywords

political partiesparty machineclientelismpatronage
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Handbook of Political Sociology , pp. 666 - 680
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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