Clientelism or public goods: dilemma in a ‘divided democracy’

The Wikipedia definition of clientelism states: “exchange systems where voters trade political support for various outputs of the public decision-making process”. Descriptive accounts of clientelism often include both, “vote-purchases via upfront pre-election payments (which are unconditional), as well as post-election delivery promises conditional on election” (Bardhan and Mookherjee, 2012). In this paper, we use ‘clientelism’ in the sense of vote-buying, i.e., pre-electoral unconditional payments with the hope of influencing the votes in the favor of the clientelistic party.

We elucidate on ‘elite’ and ‘non-elite’ below in Sect. 1.2—but note that several political parties have these features—like the BJP (elite) and the Left (non-elite) in India, the PKS (elite) and the PKB (non-elite) in Indonesia, and the FJP (elite) and Salafist Al-Nour party (non-elite) in Egypt (see Thachil (2014) for much more details).

The term ‘clientelism’ is very broad in its scope and has been used in many different senses by various branches of scholarship and authors. For example, in anthropological studies, it refers to a “dyadic transaction between traditional notables and their dependents bound by ties of reciprocity.” (Chandra, 2007) Similarly, van de Walle (2007) speaks of “clientelism that emerged in post-colonial Africa was decentralized and rarely focused on the party. Clientelistic networks were fragmented, crisscrossing all sorts of organizations in which elites exerted power and competed for supremacy. Every state’s institution appeared to benefit from them, but so did union organizations, the military, and even organized religions.” However, unlike these instances, the sense in which we use the term is voters (possibly) reciprocating with votes for materialistic benefits (inducements before the election) bestowed on them by the patrons who are politicians.

However, there is an issue of commitment since with secret ballot, voters can easily renege—that is, accept benefits from the machine but vote as they choose during elections. This problem is also related to problems of what exactly a political party wants when it gives benefits to voters—is it turnout buying (of loyalists), is it abstention buying (of opposing voters), is it double persuasion (of indifferent or opposing voters) or is it rewarding loyalists? (Nichter, 2008, Gans-Morse et al., 2014) Some authors have looked at clientelism as portfolio diversification (Magaloni et al., xxxx, Estévez et al., 2002). In our formal model, we refrain from making subtle distinctions within clientelism and take it in the sense of vote-buying where a political party makes transfers (monetary or in kind) to the people to increase the probability of people voting for them.

In fact, election to the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu got scratched courtesy when the Income Tax Department seized Rs 11.48 crore (approximately US $1.5 million) from the house of a candidate for Vellore. It was alleged that the money would have been used to influence voters in his favor.

However they use it in the sense of rewarding loyalists. Hence in their set-up, prior to election, each party holds a rally, and citizens decide which rally, if at all, they want to attend. Attendance is observable by both parties, who then condition the delivery of benefits to citizens on that basis. Specifically, a political party, if elected will deliver benefits only to those citizens that attended its pre-election rally and did not attend the rally of the rival party. Hence they study only post-election delivery of clientelistic benefits. For example, jobs as civic volunteers, as para-teachers, in primary schools, etc. are all bestowed on people who are enlisted workers for the party of the government. (Editorial in Ananda Bazaar Patrika, a leading Bengali daily of West Bengal.)

Krishna (2007) distinguishes between different kinds of leaders available to the villages like “political party officials, traditional village patrons (jajmaan), elected local council (panchayat) leaders, caste leaders, and naya netas.”

This kind of division is often seen in real-life. For example, pertaining to two major political parties, PKS and PKB in Indonesia, Thachil (2014) notes, “Of members supporting the PKS, 56% were in the top third of the overall sample in terms of percentage of their educational attainment (most were college graduates). By contrast, only 17% were in the bottom third of this category (almost all of whom had not completed secondary school). In sharp contrast, 49% of the members supporting the PKB came from the least educated subsample, and only 22% from their more educated counterparts.” This points to the elite nature of PKS’s cadre and the disadvantaged core base of its rival PKB.

This also seems to be historically true since the elite parties have tried to expand their voter base under changed political circumstances but it is not commonplace to find a non-elite party trying to attract an elite voter base.

Note that the model does not distinguish between different levels of government (as in reality). In reality, in India for example, most public goods provisioning takes place at the local level (Panchayats or Urban Local Bodies). Hence for the purposes of the theoretical model, the party-operation level we are focusing on, is the level at which decisions are being made (at the Panchayat/Urban Local Bodies level in the Indian context). Hence the public good under consideration can be thought to be roads, bridges, schools etc. in the village (and not national defence, space programs etc. which are mainly provided by the government at the national/state level.) The analysis of the model should be visualised keeping this caveat in mind. I am indebted to an anonymous referee for highlighting this aspect of federalism.

This also rests a related doubt—is it the case that the elitist party doles out clientelistic benefits because it cannot provide public goods, simply because it does not operate at the lowest levels of government who is in charge of such public goods provisioning? It turns out that it is not so. In other words, it is not the case that the elitist party (BJP in our case, say) has to dole out clientelistic benefits because it is operating at the national and state levels (and not at the local level), and hence cannot, even if it wanted to, provide local public goods (because that decision wrests with some other level of government which is controlled by some other party). In fact, in rather interesting empirical findings, it turns out that the elitist party (BJP in India), was at the Union, state, and local government levels, and still chose to offer clientelistic transfers instead of public goods. See Sect. 3.1 for a closer look at such examples.

Auerbach (2015) elucidates on various organizational methods that even help to increase the support of BJP among Muslim voters, “The main structure of the BJP is supplemented by the prakosht and morcha, or cells and wings, each tasked to organize various groups in support of the party. These groups include the SCs and STs, OBCs, farmers, laborers, women, lawyers, university students, youth, and slum dwellers. Party organizations are further strengthened by their social organization affiliates, such as Seva Bharati, the Bajrang Dal, and the RSS. ... Among the most surprising findings of my fieldwork was the growing strength of the BJP within Muslim slum settlements in Jaipur and Bhopal. The BJP and its Sangh Parivar affiliates have long held deeply antagonistic, often violent relations with India’s Muslims. Indeed, Modi’s political career has been colored by the Hindu-Muslim riots that unfolded during his tenure as chief minister in Gujarat during the early 2000s. My qualitative fieldwork, though, demonstrated that the BJP has made efforts in Jaipur and Bhopal to build support in Muslim communities.”

Services were mainly provided by two major wings of the Sangh network, Seva Bharati (Service to India, SB) and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (Association for the Welfare of the Tribals, VKA).

Mai means mother baap means father, and sarkar means government in Hindi.

Which means ‘Scheme’ in Hindi.

Which means “Take what you want” in Hindi.

According to Wikipedia (https://​en.​wikipedia.​org/​wiki/​Nagar_​panchayat), “A Nagar Panchayat or Notified Area Council (NAC) in India is a settlement in transition from rural to urban and therefore a form of an urban political unit comparable to a municipality. An urban centre with more than 12,000 and less than 40,000 inhabitants is classified as a Nagar Panchayat”.

For example, since public goods are provided at the local level, if BJP was not in power at that level, then there could arise doubt that it has not provided public goods simply because it couldn’t. Such a scenario does not arise here. Please see more discussion on this in Sect. 3.4 below.

See Brownlee (2013) for example, for an account of what is popularly known as the Arab Springs, and Masoud (2015) for what might have happened to democracy in the Arab world after the initial show of promise.

See Pahwa (2013), for example, for an account of the ideational and political transformation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) since its inception. Of how they adapted to “democratic and ‘secular’ political ideas by reframing them in religious terms... creating... a hybrid ‘secularized’ Islamism. This hybridization has both enabled and constrained the Brothers’ adaptation to democracy in the post-Mubarak period.” She further summarizes, “The ‘translation’ of democratic norms into Islamic terms, and Islamist norms into democratic political procedure, allowed the MB to keep its political and religious missions alive side-by-side.”

Many researchers have noted that Islamists earn the loyalties of the masses through their provision of social services to those unable to afford them. See Masoud (2014) for many such references. Grewal et al. (2019) show how such social services especially attract the economically weaker sections, who believe that supporting the Islamists will confer divine rewards on them in afterlife.

See Longley (2007) and Longley (2010), for accounts of ‘patronage politics’ pervading the upper echelons of the Yemeni society and corrupt practices that are practiced by the politicians to retain power. In Longley (2013), she argues how effectively regime changes have been cosmetic and nothing really has changed from within. See Carapico (1993) for a somewhat more positive outlook at Yemeni politics.

Tomsa (2012) analyses how the PKS has evolved from being a staunchly Islamist party to a more moderate one over time.

Hamayotsu (2011) in fact states that these efforts could gain ground especially where the state apparatus in delivering these services has failed. “Indonesia’s weak state bureaucracy—prone to patronage-based distribution of public resources—has left government ineffective in delivering even basic welfare services such as healthcare to the poor. This chronic problem has been aggravated by decentralization processes launched in 2001. The state’s inability to meet fundamental societal needs has left huge service gaps to be filled by non-state actors, especially religious welfare movements, which have flourished since the late 1990s.”

For example, “The women’s wing of the party also expanded its structures (Pos Wanita Keadilan, Women’s Justice Station) tasked to provide a range of social services. The wing is focused on family-friendly services targeted at housewives, mothers, and children, including donation of books and school materials, mobile libraries for children, promotion of recycled products, classes on home health care and baby nutrition, catering, and sewing training to empower single mothers.” (Hamayotsu, 2011)

United Nations Development Programme, Indonesia National Human Development Report 2004, p. 7., available at http://​hdr.​undp.​org/​sites/​default/​files/​indonesia_​2004_​en.​pdf.

In fact, Indonesia outperforms India on almost every measure of social development. In 2010, India’s poverty rate was 35%, Indonesia’s 18%, under-5 mortality rate in India was 63 per 1000 live births, in Indonesia, it was 35, and India’s literacy rate remained 30 percentage points lower than that of Indonesia (63–93). Hence Indonesia seems more to resemble Kerala than Chhatisgarh.

In a very interesting study, Pepinsky et al. (2012) show that Islamic parties have political advantage, only when voters are unsure about the economic policies of the parties. “We show that when citizens rate parties’ economic policies as either favorable or unfavorable, Islamic parties have no advantage over non- Islamic parties. However, when citizens are unsure about economic policies, Islamic parties do have a distinct political advantage.”

I am very thankful to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.

The data on GDP at current market prices is obtained from https://​dbie.​rbi.​org.​in, data on Cash Schemes is obtained from https://​dbtbharat.​gov.​in, the data on Midday meals and ICDS is obtained from the union budgets, available online at https://​www.​indiabudget.​gov.​in/​.

The data on “Expenditure on Education As Ratio to Aggregate Expenditure” can be obtained from “State Finances : A Study of Budgets”, RBI (https://​rbi.​org.​in/​Scripts/​AnnualPublicatio​ns). The DBT Transfer data is obtained from DBT Bharat (https://​dbtbharat.​gov.​in) from “State wise DBT Fund Transfer”.

Once again, I am extremely thankful to an anonymous referee for bringing up this facet of clientelistic politics.