Clientelism |
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Clientelism (or patronage) is a general term for long term relationships between persons or groups, in which:
one side, the patron or Big Man, is the only one who can arbitrarily provide - or deny - several vital opportunities (like the right to buy or sell, or the access to medical care or education), and
the other side, the client, can't objectively have a supportable life without these opportunities, and
the patron uses his power to coerce the client to constantly taking or not taking certain action (like selling - or not selling - his products to a specific person or at a specific price).
In large parts of Eastern Europe, clientelism is ubiquitous. Small local patrons like the manager of a local company are themselves clients of county level leaders of the government party, who owe their position to regional Big Men and so on. When those relations become generalised we speak of clientelistic networks. They tend to connect people and power from very different areas.
Sometimes, because of goodwill or inexperience western observers interpreted symptoms of clientelism as reforms gone wrong, finding a cause in the inexperience of local authorities, lack of resources or an inappropriate legal framework. While this might be true in a few cases, it generally is not, as many locals will confirm. Clientelism is a stable system on a national scale, not reforms gone wrong. Clientelism is not the result of the people in power not knowing how to do better or not having the money to do better. It is purposely there, because it serves the most influential and powerful and it feels familiar to them.
Poverty tends to stabilise a clientelistic system: the poorer ordinary people are, the more dependent they are upon the goodwill of their patrons. The political elite and its government gives in such cases great care in order to keep the private sector weak, so no independent income generating activities can grow outside the clientelistic network. Dependency is the currency in a clientelistic system and any effort to increase independent opportunities for ordinary people is correctly perceived as a tendency to lower the value of patrons' goodwill. So sometimes when development aid comes, the clientelistic system will defend itself: simple projects will just never finish, or their administrative cost will become prohibitive.
Clientelism is an ugly, sad world, a frustrating experience also for local people.
Related phenomena
Clientelism is sometimes confused with corruption. Corruption is about individual transactions: somebody wants a new car, for which he would have to wait 2 months. So he pays the reseller an extra overtax and he receives it in 2 days. Clientelism, but not corruption, is a continuous phenomenon of coerced loyalty. Somebody who enters a clientelistic relationship doesn't know when, how or how long he will have to pay this „favour“.
Another frequent confusion is between clientelism and mafia. The principle how they produce coerced loyalty is similar, but one important difference, is that clientelism is not criminal or illegal. It's just abusive, humiliating and deeply frustrating, but it is not necessarily about drugs or smuggling.
Clientelism is frequent in Eastern Europe because it has cultural roots. This explains why it exists from Sofia to Vladivostok, although there is no central power any more to impose it.
Clientelism is about monopolies of distribution of resources and opportunities. It is about getting into the position to deny other people access to markets, goods, employment, security, health care, even if they are entitled to them, and asking a price for giving it back and about this becoming so regular, that general loyalty can be asked as payment on a permanent basis. This is important, because when this system becomes stable, it means money is not important, profit is not important, technology is not important, moral is not important. The monopoly of distribution will be the one thing a patron will not sell for any price and for any promise.
Clientelism is dangerous, because it can infiltrate even sound democracies with working markets and political checks and balances.
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