Clientilism

Clientelism is a relationship of asymmetric exchange in which a patron delivers material benefits, protection or access to a client in return for political support, and the exchange is contingent on that support.

Defining features. It is dyadic and personal rather than institutional; asymmetric in power; reciprocal, so it survives on repeated dealings; and it requires some capacity to monitor whether the client delivered.

Distinctions.

• From programmatic politics, where benefits follow published rules and reach recipients whether or not they voted for the government.
• From corruption, which is private appropriation; clientelism redistributes to a constituency, which is why it can be electorally popular.
• From pork-barrel politics, which targets districts rather than identified individuals.

In India. Clientelism operates through intermediaries — the party worker, the local strongman, the fixer described in Anirudh Krishna's work on naya netas — who convert access into votes. Kanchan Chandra's argument in Why Ethnic Parties Succeed (2004) is that ethnic voting in India is often instrumental: voters choose co-ethnic patrons because ethnicity is a cheap signal of who will deliver in a patronage democracy.

Change. Direct benefit transfer, biometric authentication and rule-based entitlements weaken the intermediary by making delivery traceable, and welfare has become more programmatic. But credit-claiming has adapted, so the beneficiary vote can look clientelist even where distribution is rule-bound.