Political machine
The articles clientelism and patronage overlap thematically. Information that you are looking for here may therefore also be found in the other article.
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Clientelism is a system of personal, unequal dependency relationships in political apparatuses, between influential persons and their clients on the basis of performance and consideration. If one looks at this form of asymmetrical relationship from the side of the influential person, one also speaks of patronage.
The clientel (Latin clientela, originally legal institution of the protective relationship) is a group of clients, in ancient Rome as today, as the person who consults a lawyer or lets him speak for him (cluere: to hear, to obey). In the Middle Ages, the continued use of Roman law also retained the terms "cliens" and "advokatus". In political terms, clientelism is a precursor of indirect democracy, since the patron ensures responsibility for the welfare and security of his clientele and receives food and labor in exchange (i.e., taxes, harvests, servitude, and troops for defense).
Clientelism is an organizational scheme with both feudalistic and familiaristic structural elements. It is a special form of parochial - participatory (political) culture, which, from the anthropological analysis, represents only an exchange relationship between two people with unequally distributed power opportunities. This exchange relationship is based on mutual interests and mutual assistance.
Political clientelism refers to the exchange of favours, goods and services from party political leaders for political support or loyalty, for example in the form of votes, from clients. This practice is still very widespread in Latin America today; the Peronist Party in Argentina, for example, is well known for modern political clientelism. Particularly in poor urban districts, dependencies are created by distributing social benefits from the municipal administration to the needy via brokers, thus securing political support for the preferred candidate, e.g. by linking the receipt of food or medicine to attendance at party events.
Historian Heinz A. Richter considers clientelism to be the essential constitutive element of all Balkan states that have been under the Muhtar system of the Ottoman Empire, including Greece.
Political clientelism is a form of corruption.
Related terms
- Camarilla
- Kazike (Spain)
- Clientelism
- Lobbying
- Nepotism
- Party Machine, Tammany Hall
- Policy Network
- Nepotism
- Clan
- Cologne clique
- ambactus
