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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.

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.

Ethnic conflict is not—because there are no ethnic groups in conflict. This is the main conclusion of a comparison of so-called "ethnic conflicts" in the Balkans and in colonial India. A comparison of Muslim nation building in these two regions provides several valuable insights that go far beyond the specific cases. Thus far, there have been many hints in the literature on similarities between Bosnia and Pakistan or the Balkans and the Indian subcontinent as a whole. But there have been no systematic comparisons, though many parallels emerge when we look more closely.

Mit der Gründung des modernen unabhängigen Libanon 1943 wurde der feudale und patrimoniale Klientelismus zwar weitgehend unterdrückt, an seine Stelle traten jedoch neue Formen des Klientelismus. Im einzelnen untersucht der Autor 1. den sogenannten zu'ama'-Klientelismus, bei dem hohe Politiker als Machthaber fungieren, 2. den Klientelismus der Parteien, der in erster Linie konfessionalistisch bestimmt ist, 3. den Klientelismus der Milizen, der mit dem Ausbruch des Bürgerkriegs von 1975-1990 in Konkurrenz zum Klientelismus der 'zu'ama' und der Parteien trat, und 4. den Klientelismus islamistischer Gruppierungen, wie Hizballah und al-Jama'ah al-islamiyya, die durch weitreichende Sozialhilfe an Popularität gewonnen haben. Der Klientelismus, schließt der Autor, habe in neuer Gestalt an der Seite moderner Formen der politischen Partizipation überlebt, letztendlich sei er jedoch ein Hindernis weiterer Modernisierung und Demokratisierung. (DÜI-Mjr)

Jean- François MEDARD — Clientelism and political corruption. The terms « clientelism » and « corruption » deserve to be clarified, both in conceptual terms as well as from the mechanisms of the phenomena which they refer to. Should we oppose political corruption and clientelism ? If we adopt an axiologically neutral attitude, both phenomena imply some form of social legitimacy. Clientelism may be opposed to corruption in terms of commercial exchange, but not to corruption in terms of social exchange. A normative viewpoint is however preferable if we are to do away with these increasingly perverse practices.

Examines relation between politics and economic change by comparing politics of economic reform in Brazil and Argentina, arguing that new free market economics is not incompatible with political clientelism, patronage and corruption, and that such politics sometimes has been instrumental in securing economic reform.