Chapter 3 distills the logic and mechanisms by which citizens help to sustain relational clientelism.Although these ongoing exchange relationships are relatively resilient to many challenges facing electoral clientelism, their survival is imperiled by the possibility that citizens or politicians may engage in opportunistic defection.Citizens may renege on their vote promises, and politicians may renege on their promises of material benefits.Voters often undertake purposive actions to mitigate this dual credibility problem, and thereby fortify relational clientelism. Vulnerability frequently motivates clients to do so, as clientelist relationships provide an important form of informal insurance when the state fails to provide an adequate social safety net.This theoretical chapter examines two citizen mechanisms—declared support and requesting benefits. Building on a signaling model, it examines how citizens declare support to transmit meaningful information about the credibility of their vote promises. In addition, it elaborates the logic by which citizens can screen against politicians who are unlikely to follow through on promises of benefits beyond election campaigns.

Chapter 1 introduces how and why citizens often play a crucial role in the survival of clientelism.The persistence of clientelism across the world presents an intriguing puzzle, given the wide range of challenges that ostensibly threaten its existence.The chapter summarizes the book’s argument that vulnerability often spurs citizens to undertake actions that help sustain “relational clientelism” – ongoing exchange relationships with politicians who render assistance when adversity strikes.It introduces two key mechanisms – declared support and requesting benefits – by which citizens fortify these long-term clientelist relationships. The chapter distinguishes relational clientelism from electoral clientelism and other forms of distributive politics, and examines why the phenomenon is especially prone to opportunistic defection.It provides an overview of each chapter, and discusses scope conditions and broader implications.The chapter explains why Brazil presents a fortuitous context to test the argument; corroborative evidence is also provided from Argentina and Mexico, as well as from Ghana, India, Lebanon, Yemen, and cross-national surveys in Africa and Latin America.

Chapter 8 concludes by providing a summary of the overall argument and discussing implications for democracy and development. It emphasizes that relational clientelism is an inferior substitute for an adequate welfare state, but it provides an informal risk-coping mechanism in countries with patchy coverage. The chapter explores why citizens’ actions to fortify ongoing exchange relationships may have important consequences for higher levels of political systems, given that the local politicians examined in this book often serve as brokers for state, provincial, and national politicians. It also discusses when citizens might shift away from sustaining relational clientelism, drawing on findings from a field experiment in which our team randomly distributed water cisterns to reduce vulnerability in Northeast Brazil.Moreover, it suggests directions for future research.First, it emphasizes the need to take more seriously the independent role of voters in the survival of clientelism. Second, it underscores the importance of studying how vulnerability, and not just poverty, affects contingent exchanges. And finally, it calls for refocused attention on ongoing exchange relationships.