Clientelism Analysis

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.