Suchergebnisse

Individual electoral clientelism involves the allocation of handouts to voters around elections. Why is this strategy common in some contexts but not in others? This article demonstrates that ethnic group institutional structure helps to explain this variation. Where ethnic groups are organized hierarchically and have centralized leadership, politicians leverage this infrastructure to mobilize voters wholesale. Where they are not, politicians forge linkages directly with voters, resulting in more electoral clientelism. I provide evidence from a set of African countries, where there is variation in the social structure of ethnic and religious groups. I show that electoral clientelism is more widespread in countries where ethnic groups have a decentralized organization. An individual-level analysis of electoral clientelism in 15 African countries further shows that members of decentralized groups are most likely to receive electoral handouts. The findings contribute to the comparative literature on clientelism and highlight how the organizational structure of intermediaries can shape strategies of clientelism.

Despite its widespread currency in political science, the concept of clientelism has rarely found its way into the literature on communist systems. Students of communist politics regularly note the importance of personal ties, and many recognize the significance of informal bonds in economic and political spheres atalllevels of society. Some even apply the term "clientelism" to the political behavior they describe. Yet these studies are generally limited to elite-level politics, to factionalism, career mobility, recruitment patterns, and attainment of office at the top- to middle-level echelons of the bureaucracy.2Few have considered clientelism as a type of elite-mass linkage through which the state and the party exercise control at the local level, and through which individuals participate in the political system.

This paper deals with the problem of political clientelism in Serbia broadly defined as the selective distribution of benefits (money, jobs, information, a variety of privileges) to individuals or clearly defined groups in exchange for political support. The main objective is to explain why political clientelism is widespread in Serbia and which key factors determine its shape and intensity. The explanation is based on the analysis of historical factors of development of clientelism in Serbia, as well as on analysis of data from a recent research on informal relations between political and economic elites in Serbia and Kosovo. The paper concludes that clientelism and informality have represented one of the structuring principles of socioeconomic and political development of Serbian society under the conditions of weak formal institutions and socio-historical heritage of late modernization. On the other hand, since 2000 economic and political sphere in Serbia became more open and competitive which influenced change in the character of clientelism in Serbia - the increased rivalry among different clientelistic (sub) networks heightened the chance of opportunistic defection even at the top level, which made political power of patrons more tradable and the relation inside the power network less asymmetric.