In many young democracies, local politics remain a bastion of nondemocratic practices, from corruption to clientelism to abuse of power. Focusing on the practice of clientelism in social policy in Argentina, this book argues that only the combination of a growing middle class and intense political competition leads local politicians to opt out of clientelism.

Amengual investigates how labor and environmental regulations can be enforced by drawing on a study of politics in Argentina.

Clientelism is a prominent feature of many of the world’s democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes. Yet the comparative study of this practice, which involves exchanging personal favours for electoral support, remains strikingly underdeveloped. This book makes the case that clientelistic politics take different forms in different countries, and that this variation matters for understanding democracy, elections, and governance. Involving collaboration by experienced observers of politics in several countries – Mexico, Ghana, Sudan to Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Caribbean and Pacific Island states, and Malaysia – the chapters in this volume unpack the concept of clientelism and show that it is possible to identify different types of patronage democracies. The book proposes a comparative framework that focuses on the networks that politicians use, the type of resources they hand out, their degree of control over the distribution of state resources, and shows that the comparative study of a key informal dimension of politics offers much analytical promise for scholars of democracy and governance. Varieties of Clientelism is essential reading for scholars and students interested in clientelism, patronage democracies, comparative political economy, as well as party politics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Democratization.

Describes what patronage employees do in exchange for their jobs and provides a novel explanation of why they do it.

Contemporary political parties often use state resources to win elections. In this context, electoral clientelism evolved from the straightforward vote buying to sophisticated exchanges in which the relationship between patrons (parties or candidates) and clients (voters) is sometimes difficult to grasp. We address the question how do the distributive politics and electoral clientelism interact, how these forms of interactions differ across various context, and what implications they bring for the functioning of political systems. The special issue provides theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to the burgeoning literature about the multi-faceted feature of electoral clientelism. It unfolds the complex relationship between distributive politics and clientelism, and conceptualizes electoral clientelism as a dynamic process that occurs through different sequences. It enriches the methodological tools aimed at investigating electoral clientelism. Finally, the special issue approaches clientelism from several perspectives and brings together substantive empirical evidence about the varieties of clientelism around the world.

The Creation of Modern Buenos Aires examines the impact of civic associations on the culture and the society of Buenos Aires and their ties to politics in the first decades of the twentieth century. The period saw the emergence of the modern political system with true appeals to the voters, tremendous urban growth, and the solidification of a barrio identity. Historian Joel Horowitz examines four types of organizations: football clubs, bibliotecas populares (popular libraries), sociedades de fomento (development societies that pushed for barrio improvements), and universidades populares (popular universities that provided practical training beyond the primary school level). All four types became important social centers and were connected to the political world. The book focuses on the period from the passage of a voting reform law in 1912, which made male-citizen voting obligatory and fraud more difficult, to the military coup of 1943. The book shows how civic associations helped create the social world of the city, focusing especially on the part they played in the development of the sense of barrio. It demonstrates how civic associations became vital links in the system of politics that emerged, creating spaces for politicians to build connections to different communities.

Political parties in the United States and Britain used clientelism and patronage to govern throughout the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, however, parties in both countries shifted to programmatic competition. This book argues that capitalists were critical to this shift. Businesses developed new forms of corporate management and capitalist organization, and found clientelism inimical to economic development. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Britain, this book shows how national business organizations pushed parties to adopt programmatic reforms, including administrative capacities and policy-centered campaigns. Parties then shifted from reliance on clientelism as a governing strategy in elections, policy distribution, and bureaucracy. They built modern party organizations and techniques of interest mediation and accommodation. This book provides a novel theory of capitalist interests against clientelism, and argues for a more rigorous understanding of the relationship between capitalism and political development.