Explaining Political Clientelism: Evidence from Argentina

这项调查评估了委托人政治动员的原因和动力。在裙带主义下，政党向低收入选民提供个性化的报酬，以换取政治支持，而不是(或除此之外)方案利益或公共产品。这项由国家科学基金会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，会采取委托人、方案和其他战略。在阿根廷，研究人员采访了政党官员和工作人员，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，这些假设是关于导致政党部署委托人策略和引导选民接受这些策略的条件。这项研究评估了经济结构、选举规则、选区大小和社会网络密度在鼓励政党在省和地方层面采取裙带主义战略方面的影响，以及风险厌恶、互惠规范和恐吓在鼓励选民接受裙带主义方面的影响。这项研究对阿根廷政治的学者以及该国和其他新民主国家的政治和经济改革者具有更广泛的影响。关于第一种影响，这项研究生成了一个大型数据库，其中包含阿根廷一些省的选举回返、人口统计以及预算和财政信息，这些信息是在市政当局一级衡量的。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，理论家们表明，裙带主义会刺激政党让他们的选民贫穷和依赖，即使他们向这些选民提供了一些有价值的商品。因此，发展中国家和新的民主政体中的裙带主义可能会制造贫困陷阱，滋生贫困并使之永久化。裙带主义还削弱了选民自主选举选择的能力，从而玷污了民主的质量。这类研究找出了裙带主义的原因和破坏它的因素，可以作为改革者的指南。

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.