ECPR Press Clientelism and Democratic Representation in Comparative Perspective

Since the Third Wave of democratization research on clientelism has experienced a revival. The puzzling persistence of clientelism in new and old democracies inspired researchers to investigate the micro-foundations and causes of this phenomenon. Though the decline of clientelistic practices - such as vote buying and patronage - in democratic contexts has often been predicted, they have proven to be highly adaptive strategies of electoral mobilization and party building. This volume seeks to contribute to this new line of research and develops a theoretical framework to study the consequences of clientelism for democratic governance. Under governance we understand "all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization, or territory, and whether through laws, norms, power or language". Review Scholars have offered much speculation, but little evidence on the consequences of clientelism for political representation and citizens' socio-economic life chances. The volume edited by Ruth-Lovell and Spirova makes a big step forward to focus attention on these subjects and present pertinent results. It will be a model and agenda setter for future research.--Herbert P. Kitschelt, George V. Allen Professor of International Relations, Duke University A timely and insightful contribution to the ongoing debate on the drivers of clientelism and its consequences for democratic representation. This collection of essays, spanning many regions of the world - from Latin America to India, from Europe to Asia - investigates both sides of democratic representation - delegation and accountability - analyzing clitetelism in both roles as dependent and independent variable. Building on a consolidated literature, the editors, Saskia Ruth-Lovell and Maria Spirova, and the other contributors to this volume arrive at some important conclusions - for example, that ethnic or other types of segmental politics are fully compatible with the adoption of clientelistic exchanges or that clientelism indeed tends to undermine its own financial sustainability and lead to suboptimal allocation of resources - by means of often innovative quantitative and qualitative analyses that push the frontier of research on clientelism forward.--Simona Piattoni, Professor of Political Science, University of Trento About the Author Maria Spirova is senior lecturer of Comparative Politics and International Relations, University of Leiden. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee and has previously studied political science at the Central European University and the American University in Bulgaria. She works in the area of comparative politics and her research interests include political parties, party patronage and corruption and the democratic representation of ethnic minorities.