Clientelism and corruption: Institutional adaptation of state capture strategies in view of resource scarcity in Greece
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Author | Aris Trantidis,Vasiliki Tsagkroni |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117700658 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117700658
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2017, Vol. 19(2) 263 –281
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117700658
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Clientelism and corruption:
Institutional adaptation
of state capture strategies
in view of resource scarcity
in Greece
Aris Trantidis1 and Vasiliki Tsagkroni2
Abstract
How do strategies of state capture adapt to tight fiscal conditions? The article uses a historical
institutionalist approach and content analysis to study the case of Greece. Three theoretically
relevant patterns of institutional adaptation are unearthed: first, limited resources for state capture
do indeed trigger self-limitation initiatives as expected, but these initiatives replace costly benefits
with less costly ones. Second, different forms of capture have different implications for the terms
of political competition. Third, there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between clientelism
and corruption, which becomes pronounced in the creative ways by which strategies of capture
adjust to shifting opportunities and constraints. Clients are appointed in state offices and extract
bribes directly from citizens. ‘Client corruption’ replaces extraction from the state with extraction
through the state, which is less costly for the public finances: the benefit the governing party gives
to its clients is the ‘right’ to extract rents for themselves.
Keywords
clientelism, content analysis, corruption, Greece, Greek politics, historical institutionalism, media
and politics, patronage, state capture
Introduction
State capture describes the collusion practices by which actors use state power to extract
personal benefits. These practices have a considerable cost for public finances and the
economy. In devising strategies for capture, political actors face the problem of resource
scarcity and, as state capture expands, they sooner or later confront fiscal limitations.
How these limitations affect state capture is a particularly interesting question to explore,
1Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy
2Department of Media & Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Aris Trantidis, Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana—
Via dei Roccettini 9, I-50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy.
Email: aris.trantidis@kcl.ac.uk
700658BPI0010.1177/1369148117700658The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsTrantidis and Tsagkroni
research-article2017
Article
264 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(2)
because economic and financial constraints place political actors in an unfortunate situa-
tion; they continue to gain from engaging in state capture but their fiscal capacity to do so
is diminishing. The literature has addressed this research question as an instance in which
politicians must limit the costly aspects of state capture and will, consequently, face seri-
ous consequences for their political future, which they should tackle as part of their elec-
toral strategies. This article views this situation differently, as the moment in which
political actors will try to aptly adapt their strategies of state capture in view of new
structural constraints and opportunities to keep benefiting from this practice. The specific
challenge they now face is how to re-align the benefits they extract with the fiscal cost in
a way that revamps the system of state capture.
We set out to explore these distinct patterns of adaptation of state capture in times of
fiscal strain. We focus on Greece during the 1990s and 2000s, using a historical institu-
tionalist approach combined with computer-assisted content analysis. Together, they
reveal a shift in strategies of capture that coincides with the period in which the country
was facing deteriorating economic and fiscal conditions and had committed itself to a
fiscal consolidation programme under tight surveillance by the European Union. This
period constituted a critical juncture for the reproduction of Greece’s clientelist system.1
Periods dotted with fiscal and institutional pressures for fiscal consolidation, such as this,
can be disruptive for a system of state capture which depends on fiscal resources and fis-
cal autonomy. The adaptive responses we observe during that period reveal patterns of
‘gradual institutional change’ that are, however, of great significance in their own right
for the study of state capture (cf. Mahoney and Thelen, 2010: 3).
The study of the Greek case illustrates that the interplay between state capture and
resource availability exhibits nuanced dynamics. A number of propositions are explored
about how forms of state capture can be reshaped. Political actors have great leeway in
adjusting a system of state capture in conditions of fiscal stress: (1) they can take self-limi-
tation initiatives, (2) they can resort to cheaper resources for distribution, (3) they can search
for new resources for extraction and, quite importantly, (4) they can replace extraction from
the state—the distribution of state-owned resources, which is fiscally costly—with extrac-
tion through the state: the extraction of benefits from the private economy by state actors
who exploit the regulatory monopoly of the state for personal gain.
The way political elites try to meet the demands of their clients and partially overcome
the fiscal limits to benefit extraction suggests that the conceptual boundaries between
clientelism and corruption are porous. The benefits distributed by means of clientelism
are not confined solely to benefits that require prior resource extraction by the state, such
as jobs, goods and services paid by tax revenue or public borrowing. Instead, clientelism
intersects with corruption when patrons offer their clients the capacity to extract benefits
for themselves directly from the private sector in forms typically referred to as adminis-
trative or bureaucratic corruption. The benefit which the patrons give to their clients is
simply the ‘right’ to extract rents for themselves, thanks to a complicated legal framework
and political patronage. In this way, clientelism ‘outsources’ itself and passes its cost on
the private economy.
Forms of state capture and their interplay
State capture occurs when political, economic or social groups conspire to gain access to
the distributional and regulatory powers of the state with the explicit aim to extract selec-
tive (personal) benefits. State capture involves collusion for the extraction of these
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