Explaining Political Clientelism: Evidence from Argentina

这项调查评估了附庸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，以换取政治支持，而不是（或除了）方案福利或公共产品。 由国家科学基金会资助的研究重点是阿根廷，那里的奖学金表明，政党在试图获得选举支持时采取了客户名单，方案和其他策略。 在阿根廷，研究人员进行采访，党的官员和操作人员，扩大生态数据库，她正在建设，包含选举，财政和人口数据，并进行抽样调查，测试理论驱动的假设条件领先的政党部署客户战略和领先的选民接受这些战略。 该研究评估了经济结构、选举规则、选区规模和社交网络密度在鼓励政党在省和地方各级采取客户主义战略方面的影响，以及风险规避、互惠规范、这项研究对阿根廷政治学者以及该国的政治和经济改革者产生了更广泛的影响以及其他新兴民主国家。 关于第一种影响，这项研究建立了一个大型数据库，其中载有阿根廷若干省份在市一级衡量的选举结果、人口统计资料以及预算和财政资料。 该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，庇护主义会激励政党让选民陷入贫困和依赖，尽管他们为这些选民提供了一些有价值的商品。 因此，发展中国家和新民主国家的裙带主义可能造成贫穷陷阱，助长贫穷并使贫穷永久化。 庇护主义还削弱了选民自主作出选举选择的能力，从而损害了民主的质量。 像这样的研究，确定了庇护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.