Political Clientelism in Political Studies
| Author | Carl H. Landé |
| DOI | 10.1177/019251218300400403 |
| Date | 01 October 1983 |
| Published date | 01 October 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
435
POLITICAL
CLIENTELISM
IN
POLITICAL
STUDIES
Retrospect
and
Prospects
CARL
H.
LANDÉ
This
article
assesses
the
state
of
research
on
political
clientelism
by
examining
two
collections
of
recent
articles
on
that
subject.
It
finds
that
the
collections
include
many
descriptions
of
change
in
the
nature
of
patron-client
relationships
as
well
as
some
models
of
political
systems
containing
clientelist
components
and
some
two-case
comparisons.
But
the
collections
contain
no
reports
on
attempts
to
test
hypotheses
concerning
clientelism
in
a
systematic
fashion.
This
is
explained
in
large
part
by
the
nature
of
patron-client
relationships
and
other
dyadic
structures:
They
are
amorphous,
latent,
elusive,
and
ubiquitous,
and
have
certain
problems
of
conception
and
explanation.
The
systematic
testing
of
hypotheses
will
require
ways
to
measure
dyadic
structures.
Such
measurement
should
first
be
carried
out
at
the
middle
or
institutional
level
of
political
systems.
It
is
suggested
that
dyads
may
be
identified
and
measured
most
easily
if
they
are
conceived
as
addenda
attached
to
institutionalized
relationships
or
structures.
In
a
recent
article,
Eisenstadt
and
Roniger
(1980:
42-43)
observed
that
the
study
of
patron-client
relations,
which,
in
the
1950s
and
60s,
was
rather
marginal
in
most
of
the
social
sciences,
has
lately
burgeoned
into
a
position
of
central
importance.
To
those
who,
like
this
writer,
have
been
interested
in
patron-client
relationships
since
the
earlier
of
these
decades,
this
development
is
a
heartening
one.
A
perusal
of
recent
publications
dealing
with
patron-client
relation-
ships
and
with
their
structural
cousins,
horizontal
dyadic
alliances,
shows
a
steady
increase
in
both
the
quantity
and
quality
of
this
literature.
Patron-client
relationships,
which
previously
had
been
the
province
of
historians
of
antiquity
and
the
Middle
Ages,
were
redis-
covered
during
the
50s
by
a
handful
of
scholars
who
were
working,
for
the
most
part
independently,
in
countries
of
Latin
America,
the
Mediterranean
region
and
Southeast
Asia.
These
researchers
found
that
vertical
relations
of
patron-clientship
seemed
to
account
for
patterns
of
436
political
affiliation
that
flew
in
the
face
of
the
then-traditional
class
and
interest-group
models
of
political
systems.
Since
then,
clientelism
has
become
a
normal
ingredient
of
studies
of
politics
in
the
Third
World.
It
is
difficult
now
to
find
a
monographic
or
textbook
treatment
of
the
politics
of
a
less
developed
country
that
does
not
make
at
least
a
brief
mention
of
clientelism
in
its
section
on
political
culture
or
informal
political
structure.
More
recently,
political
scientists
whose
interests
lie
in
the
politics
of
modern
industrial
societies
of
western
and
eastern
Europe
have
discovered
that
patron-client
relationships
and
horizontal
dyadic
alliances
help
to
fill
important
gaps
in
the
earlier
models
of
the
politics
of
these
systems
as
well.
While
expanding
the
study
of
clientelism
geographically
and
over
time,
scholars
concerned
with
these
structures
have
produced
a
number
of
increasingly
sophisticated
studies
that
examine
the
effect
of
the
presence
of
strong
clientelist
and
horizontal
dyadic
structures
upon
various
political
processes.
These
processes
include
political
and
economic
modernization,
resource
and
power
distribution,
ethnic
and
regional
integration,
the
assimilation
of
immigrants,
the
absorption
of
new
61ites
into
positions
of
power,
mass
political
organization,
center-
periphery
linkage,
imperialism,
neo-colonialism
and
cross-national
dependency,
revolution
or
its
containment,
factional
conflict
in
bureau-
cratic
polities,
interest
articulation,
corruption,
and
interpersonal
communication.
A
thorough
search
of
the
literature
on
comparative
politics
doubtless
would
add
other
processes.
One
is
tempted
to
conclude
that
to
varying
degrees
in
different
political
systems,
dyadic
interactions
can
be
shown
to
promote,
impede,
or
in
some
fashion
shape
almost
any
political
process.
SOME
RECENT
RESEARCH
IN
CLIENTELISM
The
aim
of
this
article
is
to
make
an
assessment
of
the
present
state
of
research
on
clientelism.
I have
chosen
to
survey
some
25
articles
on
clientelism
in
specific
countries
contained
in
two
recently
published
collections
of
articles
on
that
subject,
edited
by
Eisenstadt
and
Lemarchand
(1981)
and
by
Gellner
and
Waterbury
(1977).’
I
have
excluded
from
this
survey
some
articles
found
in
these
two
collections
that
are
theoretical
pieces
rather
than
empirical
studies.
By
arbitrarily
confining
the
present
survey
to
these
two
collections,
I
must
omit
many
outstanding
books
and
articles,
but
I
hope
to
accomplish
my
main
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