Contingency

Of Hicken’s four elements of clientelism, this is the load-bearing one, and it is worth being able to spot on sight.

A transfer is contingent when the recipient understands that it depends on how he votes, who he supports, or whether he shows up. Nothing has to be said. The understanding is the mechanism.

Remove contingency and the same money behaves completely differently. A benefit that arrives because you qualify is an entitlement. You can vote against the man who signed it and still receive it next month, which means it cannot be used to buy you. A benefit that arrives because you are loyal is an instrument.

This is why the diagnostic question about any Philippine transfer programme is not how large it is or how well it is targeted. It is whether the household believes it will keep arriving if the incumbent loses.

Source: Allen Hicken (2011), “Clientelism,” Annual Review of Political Science, 14, 289 to 310, free PDF, where contingency is named as one of four defining elements. The practical demonstration that contingency is not merely theoretical comes from Julien Labonne (2013) in the Journal of Development Economics, free PDF, on the randomised 4Ps rollout and incumbent vote share.

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