Suchergebnisse

The success of Kenya's garment export sector relative to other African countries challenges a growing pessimism regarding the prospects of devising and implementing industrial policy in contemporary Africa, particularly in contexts characterized by Competitive Clientelism. Kenya became sub-Saharan Africa's fourth largest exporter of garments by value during the last two decades, catching up with major players like Lesotho and South Africa while converging on the two largest exporters, Mauritius and Madagascar. Nuancing existing explanations for the sector's growth, which emphasize external factors like trade regimes and donor interventions, this article assigns a central role to the state and the balance of power that underpins it. The interests of key actors within Kenya's political settlement aligned in a way that allowed the country's Export Processing Zones (EPZ) programme to be relatively insulated from political pressures, giving the Export Processing Zones Authority (EPZA) sufficient autonomy and coordination capacities to administer a highly-conducive business environment for predominantly foreign garment firms. However, while the sector's employment and foreign exchange contributions have ensured ongoing political support, the resulting increase in garment firms' holding power has made them more assertive in demanding policies that are not only decoupled from learning processes, but detrimental to other industry players.

This article examines how parties use clientelism in competitive and uncompetitive electoral environments. It argues that parties enjoy wide discretion to target clientelistic payoffs to inexpensive voters in their strongholds, but that head-to-head competition compels them to bid for more expensive voters. Empirically, it uses a list experiment embedded in a postelection survey to study electoral clientelism in Lebanon, a country with a mix of competitive and uncompetitive electoral districts. It finds respondents underreport clientelistic transactions by a factor of two. Proxies for the cost of a vote explain payoff targeting decisions in party strongholds, but lose their explanatory power in the competitive districts.

The dominant literature on Cambodian politics over the past two decades suggested that a mixture of elite and mass clientelism had enabled the hegemonic Cambodian People's Party (CPP) to rule via competitive but authoritarian elections, while lessening its previous reliance on repression and violence. Such explanations did not predict the upswing in contestation in the country in 2013 and thereafter. Neither do they account for the crackdown that followed. Following literature that draws attention to the tensions in building and maintaining political coalitions under authoritarianism, and demonstrating the difficulties in maintaining competitive authoritarianism over time, this article draws attention to structural, institutional, and distributional impediments to the CPP leadership in building and maintaining effective reciprocal relations with electoral clients while simultaneously balancing the interests of the military and other elites at the core of the regime. To make its argument, the article compares weaknesses in the CPP's electoral clientelism with the effectiveness of patronage within the security forces, seen through the lens of Cambodia's experience of land dispossession. It shows that an extractive and exclusive political economy privileged the interests of regime insiders over potential mass electoral clients precisely during the same period the CPP was supposed to be securing its hold on power via mass electoral clientelism. This further explains why the regime fell back on repression over reform in response to the upswing in contestation manifest from 2013, and why, despite the failings of its mass patronage project, repression has nevertheless been successful as a strategy for regime survival during a period of heightened popular contestation. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

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.

How do ethnic group divisions affect parties' linkage strategies? The provision of private or local club goods favoring co-ethnics by politicians has been well documented in the literature. However, whether clientelism tends to be more widespread in ethnically highly fragmented societies has not been systematically examined. Utilizing a dataset that includes information on more than 450 parties in eighty competitive party systems, we show that the mere presence of multiple ethnic groups does not lead to more clientelistic exchange. Nevertheless, in countries characterized by high levels of economic inequality between politically relevant ethnic groups, parties are more likely to rely on clientelistic strategies to attract votes. In addition, this positive relationship between ethnic income inequality and clientelism is contingent on parties' ties to ethnic social networks. Specifically, in ethnically unequal societies, parties that can rely on existing ethnic organizations particularly engage in clientelistic modes of electoral mobilization.

ABSTRACTWhy does electoral clientelism persist when ballots are secret and elections are competitive? The provision of material rewards during campaigns is seen as the standard way politicians secure votes in 'patronage democracies'. Yet monitoring clientelistic bargains is difficult when voting is secret, several competitors may provide material inducements simultaneously, voters view such inducements as gifts and not obligations, and candidates' records are more credible signals of future performance. I argue that where elections are competitive and voters expect gifts, candidates engage in a two-pronged strategy: affirm their own status through public displays of wealth, and undermine opponents' rewards by matching inducements or encouraging voters to break reciprocity norms. In result, neither side's gifts are sufficient for a win, and parties are forced to pursue different linkage mechanisms to voters. One such mechanism involves defining and targeting broader constituencies through policy proposals. Micro-level data from Ghana confirm these expectations. The theory is better suited to environments where candidates' past records are known to constituents than existing explanations, and accounts for the apparent contradiction between the ubiquity of campaign clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa and recent empirical findings that performance evaluations and non-contingent incentives matter most to voters.

Although aggregate data on party competition in Brazil seem hopeful, unsettling trends appear in state-level party systems in the years of the consolidation of Brazilian democracy (the period this article examines extends through the 2002 elections), such as instability and fragmentation, which exceed the extent of problems apparent at the national level. These hamper the informational role parties can play for voters picking from a large number of candidates. While other possible explanations shed little light on these problems, a hypothesis about clientelistic party-building strategies may explain the patterns in party competition across states. Such strategies depend on the distribution of selective benefits, such as patronage or vote-buying, to attract candidates, elicit votes and gain office for the party. Clientelistic party-building strategies provide no extra-material incentive for party cohesion, and may stymie the development of a stable competitive system. Furthermore, it is through clientelism that party clans exercise hegemony over the local political system in some states, promoting an undemocratic monopoly on power.

Abstract: Uruguay improved its levels of universalism in the last fifteen years. This improvement is due to a prolonged process of transformation in Uruguayan politics from competitive particularism to an open access regime. We claim that the change in the way that parties compete for votes - from clientelistic to programmatic strategy – is the cause of this transformation. In order to provide descriptive evidence of the main features of this governance regime transformation, this paper traces the process of institutional reforms and elite behavioral changes that lead to that outcome, and proposes an analytic framework to explain it.

Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania share a past and present as authoritarian states. Dominant parties are in power in Tanzania and Kazakhstan, while elections are competitive but not democratic in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. Returns for political support (clientelism), and persecution of political adversaries and the electorate (repression), are key components in all four states. This dissertation provides an account of these features, and how and when dynamics of clientelism and repression have changed. Clientelism and repression are widely used to explain why states transition to a different regime type, suggesting that their presence or absence, degree or form, informs seminal changes. This dissertation turns such arguments around, instead investigating how changes in regime affect clientelism and repression, allowing an investigation of change within elites, society and the state. It looks at changes in clientelism and repression that did not lead to regime change, and at cases when clientelism and repression continue despite turnovers. Patterns where a more diverse set of actors than the incumbent are involved in repressive and clientelistic practices are investigated, and sub-concepts are developed in order to speak of these changes in more specific terms. This is investigated through careful empirical study and field work carried out in all four states. More than 300 people were interviewed during the course of several years. The perspective is historical, from the late Soviet era in Central Asia, and independence in East Africa. It tracks clientelism both within the elites (intra-elite clientelism), and aimed towards the general public (mass-elite clientelism). Changes in repression are also investigated, using an actor-centered approach regarding resources and operation.

Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania share a past and present as authoritarian states. Dominant parties are in power in Tanzania and Kazakhstan, while elections are competitive but not democratic in Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. Returns for political support (clientelism), and persecution of political adversaries and the electorate (repression), are key components in all four states. This dissertation provides an account of these features, and how and when dynamics of clientelism and repression have changed. Clientelism and repression are widely used to explain why states transition to a different regime type, suggesting that their presence or absence, degree or form, informs seminal changes. This dissertation turns such arguments around, instead investigating how changes in regime affect clientelism and repression, allowing an investigation of change within elites, society and the state. It looks at changes in clientelism and repression that did not lead to regime change, and at cases when clientelism and repression continue despite turnovers. Patterns where a more diverse set of actors than the incumbent are involved in repressive and clientelistic practices are investigated, and sub-concepts are developed in order to speak of these changes in more specific terms. This is investigated through careful empirical study and field work carried out in all four states. More than 300 people were interviewed during the course of several years. The perspective is historical, from the late Soviet era in Central Asia, and independence in East Africa. It tracks clientelism both within the elites (intra-elite clientelism), and aimed towards the general public (mass-elite clientelism). Changes in repression are also investigated, using an actor-centered approach regarding resources and operation.