Suchergebnisse

In the previous issue of this journal (ROAPE 84), the author argued that international anti‐corruption efforts created conflicts between aid donors and African debtor governments because they attacked the ability of local interests to control and appropriate state resources. The control of corruption is an essential element in the legitimation of liberal democracy and in the promotion of global markets. However, it also threatens the local accumulation of wealth and property (dependent as it is on access to the state) in post‐colonial Africa. This article explores another dimension of this problem, namely the way in which clientelist forms of political mobilisation have promoted corruption and intensified crisis. Clientelism has been a key mechanism through which political interests have built the electoral support necessary to ensure access to the state's resources. In turn, it has shaped a politics of factional competition over power and resources, a politics obsessed with the division of the political spoils. The article argues that this process is not unique to Africa. What is different, however, is that factional conflict and its attendant corruption have had such devastating consequences. This reflects the particular forms which clientelism has taken on the continent. There is a need, it concludes, to find ways to shift African politics towards issues of social justice and government performance and away from a concern with a division of the state's resources.

In the previous issue of this journal (ROAPE 84), the author argued that international anticorruption efforts created conflicts between aid donors & African debtor governments because they attacked the ability of local interests to control & appropriate state resources. The control of corruption is an essential element in the legitimization of liberal democracy & in the promotion of global markets. However, it also threatens the local accumulation of wealth & property (dependent as it is on access to the state) in postcolonial Africa. This article explores another dimension of this problem, namely the way in which clientelist forms of political mobilization have promoted corruption & intensified crisis. Clientelism has been a key mechanism through which political interests have built the electoral support necessary to ensure access to the state's resources. In turn, it has shaped a politics of factional competition over power & resources, a politics obsessed with the division of the political spoils. The article argues that this process is not unique to Africa. What is different, however, is that factional conflict & its attendant corruption have had such devastating consequences. This reflects the particular forms that clientelism has taken on the continent. There is a need, it concludes, to find ways to shift African politics towards issues of social justice & government performance & away from a concern with a division of the state's resources. 16 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the clientelistic relations which underpinned the activities of the Greek state in the field of sports policy between 1981 and 1993. It focuses on aspects of the patronage that existed between the governments of the two major political parties and some of the national governing bodies (NGBs) that control specific sports. More specifically, the study analyses the forms of political patronage employed in support of sports organizations, the processes through which such patronage is exercised, and the impacts of such support on the budgets of particular NGBs. The study employed structured interviews with key national sporting and political figures and documentary analysis of budgets of NGBs. The article demonstrates how particular parties have systematically favoured certain NGBs when they have been in office. The article concludes with a review of reasons for the continued existence of clientelistic relationships in the contemporary context.

AbstractBased on ethnographic fieldwork in a shantytown in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, this article studies the workings of Peronist "political clientelism" among the urban poor. It analyzes the web of relations that some slum-dwellers establish with local political brokers to obtain medicine, food, and solutions to other everyday concerns. The article also explores the main functions of the "problem-solving networks," which are resource control and information hoarding, and pays particular attention to an underexplored dimension of the operation of clientelism: clients' own views on the network.