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Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John Duncan Powell
John Duncan Powell*
Affiliation:
Tufts University
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Extract

The basic social relations of peasant life are directly related to an environment characterized by extreme scarcity. The major factor of productive wealth in agriculture is land, to which the peasant has little or no free access. Labor—his own, and that of his family members—is available to the peasant, but this relatively unproductive factor must be applied to land in order to generate wealth. Few other outlets for productive labor employment are available to him. When the peasant is able to combine land and labor in a wealth-generating endeavor, his productivity is likely to be extremely low, due to limiting factors such as technology, capital, marketing information, and credit. All of these life aspects combine to hold down the peasant's income and preclude savings. He is, in a word, poor.

Furthermore, the peasant is powerless against many threats which abound in his environment. There are disease, accident, and death, among the natural threats. There are violence, exploitation, and injustice at the hands of the powerful, among the human threats. The peasant knows that this environmental constellation is dangerous. He also knows that there is relatively little he can do about his situation, and, accordingly, his culture often features themes of vulnerability, calamity, and misfortune. As George Foster has neatly summarized if, the outlook this situation engenders in the peasant is the “Image of the Limited Good.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 1970 , pp. 411 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1970

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful for the support of the Center for International Affairs. Harvard University, during the development of this analysis; and I wish to thank the many individuals who were helpful at various stages of its preparation, including Professors James Kurth, Joan Nelson, Samuel Huntington, and various members of the joint Harvard-MIT faculty Seminar on Political Development to whom the original version was presented in 1968. An intermediate version of this essay was presented at the convention of the American Political Science Association in New York, September, 1969.

References

1 Consider the interesting results of Thematic Apperception Tests given to peasant respondents in Southern Italy, reported in Banfield, Edward, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Fnee Press, 1958), ch. 6Google Scholar.

2 Foster, George, “Peasant Society and the Image of the Limited Good,” in Peasant Society: A Reader (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967)Google Scholar, edited by Potter, Diaz, and Foster, p. 304. This is a very useful collection of materials.

3 On anxiety-reduction as the most powerful organizer of behavior, see Harry Stack Sullivan's The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, as applied by Presthus, Robert in The Organizational Society (New York: A. Knopf, 1962), esp. ch. 4Google Scholar.

4 See, among others, Yang, C. K., A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1959), ch. 6Google Scholar.

5 Peasant Society, op. cit., contains reprints of several good articles dealing with fictive kinship systems and their effects, including Mintz, Sidney and Wolf, Eric, “An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” pp. 174–199Google Scholar, and Hollensteiner, Mary, “Social Structure and Power in a Philippine Municipality,” pp. 200–212Google Scholar.

6 Foster, “Image of the Limited Good,” op. cit., p. 316. Also, see Wolf, Eric, “Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central Java,” pp. 230–246Google Scholar in the same volume; and Bequiraj, Mehmet, Peasantry in Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell Center for International Studies, 1966)Google Scholar.

7 Two exceptional treatments of the phenomena in question are found in Weingrod, Alex, “Patrons, Patronage and Political Parties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 10 (07 1968), pp. 376–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott, James C., “Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change,” this Review, LXII (12, 1969), 1142–1158Google Scholar.

8 Pitt-Rivers, Julian, The People of the Sierra (New York: Criterion Books, 1954), p. 140Google Scholar.

9 For an elegant and fascinating exploration of the varieties of power relationships, see Frey, Frederick W., “Concepts of Development Administration and Strategy Implications for Behavioral Change,” unpublished ms, Department of Political Science, MITGoogle Scholar.

10 Sydel Silverman, “The Community-Nation Mediator in Traditional Central Italy,” in Peasant Society, op. cit., p. 284.

11 Ibid., p. 285.

12 These processes are illuminated and applied with excellent effect by Tilly, Charles in The Vendée (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), especially ch. 2Google Scholar.

13 “Gatekeepers,” as described by Kenny, “largely dominate the paths linking the local infrastructure of the village to the superstructure of the outside urban world.” See his article “Patterns of Patronage in Spain,” in the Anthropological Quarterly, 33 (01 1960), pp. 14–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Wolf, Eric, “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico,” in Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America (New York: Random House, 1965)Google Scholar, edited by Dwight Heath and Richard Adams, p. 97. (Italics added)

15 Latin America, China, and Japan cited by Wolf, ibid. A full treatment of clientela in Italy is given by Tarrow, Sidney, Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (New Haven: Yale, 1967)Google Scholar. For India, see Lewis and Barnouw, “Castle and the Jajmani System in a North Indian Village,” in Peasant Society, op. cit., pp. 110–134. The Philippine materials are presented by Landé, Carl in Leaders, Factions and Parties—The Structure of Philippine Politics (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1965)Google Scholar, Monograph No. 6.

16 Friedl, Ernestine, “The Role of Kinship in the Transmission of National Culture to Rural Villages in Mainland Greece,” American Anthropologist, 61 (02. 1959), 30–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lopreato, Joseph, Peasants No More (San Francisco: Chandler, 1967), Part TwoGoogle Scholar.

17 In Peasant Society, op. cit., pp. 279–293.

18 Ibid., p. 289.

19 Paulson, Belden, “The Role of the Small Intellectual as an Agent of Political Change: Brazil, Italy, and Wisconsin,” paper delivered at the American Political Science annual meeting in Chicago, 09, 1967Google Scholar.

20 Originally published in the American Anthropologist, 58 (12, 1956), 1065–1078CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Wolf, Eric, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), especially “Types of Domain,” pp. 50–59Google Scholar.

22 Shor, Edgar, “The Thai Bureaucracy,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 5 (06, 1960), pp. 70, 77, 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as cited in Roth, Guenther, “Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism, and Empire-Building in the New States,” World Politics 20 (01, 1968), p. 202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Roth, ibid., p. 203.

24 Ibid., p. 196. For vestiges of such behavior in complex societies, see Wolf, Eric, “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies,” in The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (New York: Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar, edited by Michael Banton, pp. 1–22. An excellent study of clientelist politics in administration is Anthony Leeds, “Brazilian Careers and Social Structures: An Evolutionary Model and Case History,” reprinted in Heath & Adams, Contemporary Cultures, op. cit., pp. 379–404.

25 Roth, op. cit., p. 196.

26 It would be a mistake, however, to assume that inter-broker competition automatically increases the power of the client in relation to the broker or patron. Individual brokers and/or patrons tend to control different resources, not to have differential control over the same resources. Furthermore, competition may occur in terms of the number of peasant votes, but not necessarily for the votes of the same peasants. Each broker tends to mobilize the votes of the peasants over whom he has some kind of critical leverage. Indeed, inter-broker competition may lead to less bargaining power for the client, rather than more, as for example the case of a peasant who finds himself within the power domain of a landlord, a moneylender, and a storekeeper, all of whom pressure him to vote in accord with their particular preferences. In short, the degree of power asymmetry between patron and client or broker and client is a matter for empirical enquiry; and if there is no asymmetry, the relationship in question is not clientelism.

27 Adrian Mayer, “The Significance of Quasi-Groups in the Study of Complex Societies,” in The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, op. cit., p. 103. (emphasis added). Note that at this point we might break down brokers into at least three types, or specialists: one, a grass-roots mobilizer, or “ward-heeler”; two, a pure broker, of the kind found on the floor of a stock exchange; and three, a high level influence peddler. The mobilizer can turn out the bodies for any particular purpose, the influence peddler locates political patrons who desire mass political services, and the pure broker brings them together in the political market place. Note also the cross-class-cutting nature of this process. In a significant sense, it functions to integrate actors high and low in the social hierarchy, thereby serving as a potential buffer to inter-class conflict.

28 See Sidney Tarrow, op. cit.; and Powell, John Duncan, Peasant Mobilization and Agrarian Reform in Venezuela (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

29 See Powell, John Duncan, “Venezuela: The Peasant Union Movement,” in Latin American Peasant Movements (Ithaca: Cornell University-Press, 1969), edited by Henry Landsberger, pp. 62–100Google Scholar.

30 For the proposition that the degree of tenancy correlates positively—and highly—with radical or revolutionary action on the part of the peasantry, see Stinchcombe, Arthur, “Agricultural Enterprise and Rural Class Relations,” reprinted in Political Development and Social Change (New York: Wiley, 1966), edited by Finkle and Gable, pp. 485–497Google Scholar. The same point is made by Russett, Bruce in “Inequality and Instability: The Relation of Land Tenure to Politics,” in World Politics, 16 (04, 1964), p. 452CrossRefGoogle Scholar, when tenancy is combined with a high degree of inequality in landholdings.

31 In the December 1968 elections COPEI won the presidency and hence control over the formation of a subsequent coalition government from which AD was excluded. As of this date, therefore, access of the two parties is the reverse of the 1964–1968 situation.

32 Tarrow, Peasant Communism, op. cit., p. 364.

33 See Lord, Peter P., “The Peasantry as an Emerging Political Factor in Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela,” (Madison: University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, 1965), Research Paper No. 35 (mimeo.)Google Scholar; and Erasmus, Charles, “Upper Limits of Peasantry and Agrarian Reform: Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico Compared,” in Ethnology, 6 (10, 1967), 349–380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 437Google Scholar.

35 Tarrow, Peasant Communism, op. cit., p. 261.

36 Ibid., p. 270.

37 Ibid., pp. 308–309.

38 Huntington, op. cit., especially the first and last chapters.

39 Ibid., p. 77.

40 In my study of local peasant union leaders in Venezuela, it was found that 79.9% of all contacts between local and state leaders were in the nature of personal visits. Even contacts with national level peasant union leaders were predominantly in the nature of personal visits (33.1%), rather than through correspondence (11.9%) or other means.

41 Wolf, “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies,” in The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, op. cit., p. 10.

42 For a concise picture of such relationships in the Brazilian Peasant Leagues, see Galjart, Benno, “Class and ‘Following’ in Rural Brazil,” Amèrica Latina, 7 (07–09, 1964), 3–23Google Scholar.

43 Lipset, Seymour Martin and Solari, Aldo (eda.), Elites in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 42–44Google Scholar. See also Anthony Leeds, “Brazilian Careers …” op. cit., and Wagley, Charles, “Luso-Brazilian Kinship Patterns: The Persistence of a Cultural Tradition,” in Politics of Change in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1964), edited by Maier and Weatherhead, pp. 174–189Google Scholar.

44 Sidney Mintz and Eric Wolf, “An Analysis of Ritual Co-Parenthood (Compadrazgo),” in Peasant Society, op. cit., p. 194.

45 Eric Wolf, “Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico,” in Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America, op. cit., p. 96.

46 Weiner, Myron, The Politics of Scarcity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), especially pp. 36–72Google Scholar.

47 In fact, such a literature seems about to emerge. For example, Professors René Lemarchand and Keith Legg of the University of Florida presented an excellent comparative study, “Clientelism and Politics: A Preliminary Analysis,” to the members of the joint Harvard-MIT faculty Seminar on Political Development in Februry, 1970. The paper is planned for early publication.

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