Compare methods

	Patronage Network Analysis	Clientelism Analysis
Field	Political Economy	Political Economy
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1972	2005
Originator	James C. Scott; S. N. Eisenstadt & Luis Roniger	Susan C. Stokes; Herbert Kitschelt & Steven Wilkinson
Type	Network-analytic pipeline for clientelist structures	Network-and-exchange pipeline for clientelist accountability
Seminal source	Scott, J. C. (1972). Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia. American Political Science Review, 66(1), 91-113.	Stokes, S. C. (2005). Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 315-325.
Aliases	Patron-Client Network Analysis, Patronage Pyramid Analysis, Brokerage Network Analysis, Clientelist Network Mapping	Machine Politics Analysis, Contingent Exchange Analysis, Broker-Mediated Clientelism, Party Machine Network Analysis
Related	3	3
Summary	Patronage network analysis is a relational pipeline for representing patron-client politics as a directed network and measuring its structure with the tools of social network analysis. Building on James C. Scott's 1972 account of patron-client politics in Southeast Asia and Eisenstadt and Roniger's 1984 comparative study of clientelism and trust, the approach treats the vertical, asymmetric bond between a powerful patron and a dependent client — typically mediated by brokers — as the elementary tie. By coding who is connected to whom, in which direction, and with what resource content, the analyst can compute centrality, brokerage, and structural-hole measures to reveal the pyramidal architecture through which protection and resources flow down and loyalty and support flow up.	Clientelism analysis studies the contingent, direct exchange of material benefits for political support and the broker-mediated networks that make such exchange enforceable. Susan Stokes's 2005 formal model of machine politics, built on evidence from Argentina, showed that clientelism inverts normal democratic accountability: instead of voters holding politicians to account, the party machine holds voters to account, rewarding compliance and punishing defection through brokers who can monitor behavior. Kitschelt and Wilkinson's 2007 comparative volume situated this contingent linkage alongside programmatic competition and mapped its variation across democracies. The analysis combines a network view of the party-broker-client machine with a model of how monitoring through dense social ties sustains the bargain.