AREDAs Homepage - Vision - Cultural roots of clientelism

When we speak of cultural roots we have to take a look at recent history, at how people have been living in the last 20 or 30 years.

The economy in the Comecon states was centrally planned. A central institution gathered all the information about resources and needs, then a planning committee decided what should be produced first and more (usually more weapons than consumer goods) and the production quotas were sent back to the factories and agricultural „cooperatives“ which were all owned by the state.

In time, this system was eroded from within. Factory bosses¹ grew independent. Progressively they managed to skim the resources and report phoney production numbers. Later they became the real owners of the factories, which gave them unparalleled wealth and power, because not only income but also social services like housing, education for the children and medical care came connected with the work place. After the end of the communist regime, the power of factory bosses grew even more: privatisation gave them the only thing they hadn't before: the right to sell shares in their companies².

Economic liberalisation reduced the social activities of the state, making the social services provided by companies the only way for millions to survive. Factory bosses were the only providers of all means of subsistence - and could withhold them arbitrarily, on a case-by-case basis.

So a great part of people in Eastern Europe grew up with the figure of the local big man as an universal provider of opportunities and security. The idea of keeping being loyal to the factory boss is familiar: cutting his lawn when he says, doing overtime when he says, telling journalists from the outside what he decides. The concept of being on one's own in a world which provides opportunities and freedoms (which usually is not even what Eastern European everyday life looks like anyway) is unfamiliar. Even when changing employer or leaving the town they grew up in, people will find it humiliating and sad to seek and join new clientelistic networks, but in a way it is a solution with known costs and risks.

1 Some authors use the term „manager“, which suggests a function which has nothing to do with that of a boss of a socialist „production unit“.

2 An interesting analysis of the power of factory „directors“ in Russia can be found in McFaul, Michael: „State power, institutional change, and the politics of privatization in Russia”, World Politics 47 / Jan.1995