Clientelism

Where patronage names the practice, clientelism names the analytical category, and it comes with a definition precise enough to test a case against.

Allen Hicken gives four defining elements:

• Dyadic. It runs between two parties, one above and one below. You met this as the patron-client tie in Level 1.
• Contingent. The benefit arrives if and only if the support does.
• Hierarchical. The parties are unequal, and the inequality is the reason the exchange works.
• Iterated. It repeats. A one-off bribe is not clientelism.

The reason a course about the Philippines needs the general theory rather than only the local vocabulary is that clientelism is not a Filipino phenomenon. It has been documented across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa and southern Europe, in societies with completely different value systems. That fact alone rules out any explanation that starts with Filipino character.

Hicken also sets out why politicians target poor households specifically, and the reason is arithmetic rather than psychology: a small transfer moves a household with nothing more than it moves a household with something.

Source: Allen Hicken (2011), “Clientelism,” Annual Review of Political Science, 14, 289 to 310. Free PDF at thepolicypractice.com. The four elements and the targeting argument are both his. The Philippine case within that literature was first mapped by Carl Landé, whose patron-client framework is covered in Lesson 1.6 along with Benedict Kerkvliet’s standing objection to it.

First used in: 2.3 · Why a decent person sells a vote