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Publications (66)
Journal Special Issue
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Political clientelism — which reflects strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of private goods and services for political support to the incumbent — has characterised distributive politics in the Global South for decades. The conditional nature of exchange between political parties and...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Mexican municipalities
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Rules versus discretionary budgets
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
![avinash-kumar-FPer9_79vSc-unsplash](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/Blog/Image/blog4-avinash-kumar-FPer9_79vSc-unsplash.jpg?itok=tg_GoSIh)
Local governments in India—known as panchayats—are sometimes criticised for failing to deliver benefits earmarked for vulnerable regions or households to the intended recipients. Mis-targeting of benefits is often attributed to political clientelism, where funds are diverted opportunistically to...
![Photo by Michal Matlon on Unsplash](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/Blog/Image/michal-matlon-7OxV_qDiGRI-unsplash.jpg?itok=BLk-2bvN)
Political clientelism is the strategic, discretionary, and targeted exchange of goods and services between politicians and voters for political support. In many low- and middle-income countries, clientelistic practices such as vote-buying and ‘machine politics’ are ubiquitous.While clientelism is...
![Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash](/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_150x200/public/Blog/Image/arnaud-jaegers-IBWJsMObnnU-unsplash.jpg?itok=dnZK-h_u)
Across Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia, political candidates often attempt to buy the votes of the most socio-economically deprived communities. But new research from Prisca Jöst and Ellen Lust argues that social cohesion in these communities is instrumental in determining the levels of support for...
Blog
In democracies around the world, election season is often associated with the power of political machines and their attempts to sway voters in their favour. While some of these efforts are overt, such as candidate debates and television ads, many rely on more pernicious strategies like electoral...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Social ties, clientelism and the poor’s expectations of future service provision
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Clientelist Politics and Development
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– From Harambee to the Constituency Development Fund
Why does clientelism persist? What determines how politicians signal responsiveness to voters and exert effort towards fulfilling campaign promises? This article explores how state capacity, legislative institutional strength, and established ideas about what politicians can do structure the...
Working Paper
pdf
– Evidence from Mexican municipalities
Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelist parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods. Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a bureaucratic...
Working Paper
pdf
– How infrastructure contracts fund vote-buying
Where does the money come from to buy votes? We argue that an important source of funds for vote-buying comes from ‘contract clientelism’, or the provision of public contracts to private firms in exchange for campaign donations. Using quantitative data on Colombian infrastructure contracts, we...
Working Paper
pdf
This paper argues that new computer, smartphone, and universal ID technologies are reducing the incentives for political clientelism in the delivery of social programmes in India, especially by allowing party leaders to bypass local brokers to credit-claim for better service delivery and allowing...
Displaying 16 of 66 results