Explaining Political Clientelism: Evidence from Argentina

本调查评估了庇护主义政治动员的原因和动态。在庇护主义下，政党为低收入选民提供个性化的回报，以换取他们的政治支持，而不是（或在此基础上）规划福利或公共产品。这项由美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）资助的研究的重点是阿根廷，在那里，学术研究表明，政党在试图获得选举支持时，会采用客户主义、纲领主义和其他策略。在阿根廷，研究人员对政党官员和工作人员进行了采访，扩展了她正在构建的包含选举、财政和人口数据的生态数据库，并进行了抽样调查，以检验理论驱动的假设，这些假设是关于主要政党部署客户主义策略和导致选民接受这些策略的条件。本研究评估了经济结构、选举规则、地区规模和社会网络密度对鼓励政党在省级和地方层面采取庇护主义策略的影响，以及风险规避、互惠规范和恐吓对鼓励选民接受庇护主义的影响。这项研究对研究阿根廷政治的学者以及该国和其他新兴民主国家的政治和经济改革者产生了更广泛的影响。关于第一种影响，该研究建立了一个大型数据库，其中包括阿根廷若干省份的选举结果、人口统计、预算和财政信息，以直辖市为单位进行衡量。这个数据库将进入公共领域。关于经济和政治改革者的利益，理论家表明，庇护主义为政党创造了一种激励，使他们的选民贫穷和依赖，即使他们为这些选民提供了一些有价值的商品。因此，发展中国家和新兴民主国家的庇护主义可能制造贫困陷阱，助长贫困并使其永久化。裙带关系还削弱了选民自主选择选举的能力，从而玷污了民主的品质。诸如此类的研究确定了庇护主义的原因和破坏它的因素，可以为改革者提供指导。

This investigation assesses the causes and dynamics of clientelist political mobilization. Under clientelism, political parties offer low-income voters individualized payoffs in return for political support, rather than (or in addition to) programmatic benefits or public goods. The focus of the research funded by the National Science Foundation is Argentina, where scholarship suggests that parties adopt clientelist, programmatic, and other strategies when they attempt to generate electoral support. In Argentina, the researcher conducts interviews with party officials and operatives, expand an ecological database she is constructing that contains electoral, fiscal, and demographic data, and conduct a sample survey, to test theory-driven hypotheses about the conditions leading political parties deploy clientelist strategies and leading voters to be receptive to these strategies. The study evaluates the effects of economic structure, electoral rules, district size, and the density of social networks in encouraging parties to adopt clientelist strategies at the provincial and local levels, and the effects of risk-aversion, norms of reciprocity, and intimidation in encouraging voter receptivity to clientelism.The study has a broader impact for scholars of Argentine politics and for political and economic reformers in that country and in new democracies elsewhere. Regarding the first kind of impact, the study generates a large database with information on electoral returns, demographics, and budgetary and fiscal information, measured at the level of the municipality, for a number of Argentine provinces. This database would enter the public domain. Regarding benefits for economic and political reformers, theorists show that clientelism creates an incentive for parties to keep their constituents poor and dependent, even as they provide some valuable goods to these constituents. Clientelism in developing countries and new democracies therefore may create a poverty trap, feeding on and perpetuating poverty. Clientelism also diminishes the ability of voters to make autonomous electoral choices, hence tarnishing the quality of democracy. Studies such as this, that identify the causes of clientelism and the factors that undermine it, can serve as guides to reformers.