Brokering Bureaucrats: How Bureaucrats and Civil Society Facilitate Clientelism Where Parties are Weak

• Author: Agnes Cornell,Marcia Grimes
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221115171
• Published date: 01 May 2023
• Date: 01 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(6) 788–823

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221115171

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Brokering Bureaucrats:

How Bureaucrats and

Civil Society Facilitate

Clientelism Where

Parties are Weak

Agnes Cornell

1

and Marcia Grimes

1



Abstract

Clientelism, the exchange of selective rewards for votes, is fraught with

commitment problems and questions remain regarding how it occurs in

settings lacking strong parties. In such settings, we argue, bureaucrats can act

as brokers using their own networks. Bureaucrats can use their discretionary

power to cultivate reciprocal relations with voters and leverage this political

capital in negotiations with politicians to secure career advancements. As

brokering requires networks, we hypothesize that bureaucrats with con-

nections to civil society are more likely to exhibit brokering behavior, and

especially in localities with stronger civil society. Original survey data of

bureaucrats (N=1300) in a context of weak parties, Peru’s 25 regions plus the

city of Lima, show that bureaucrats with connections to civil society are more

likely to exhibit brokering behavior. Political and party connections are

weaker predictors of brokering. The paper thus shows how locally connected

bureaucrats may aid in coordinating clientelism.

Keywords

clientelism, civil society, bureaucrats, brokers, weak parties, Peru

1

Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Agnes Cornell, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Box 100, 405 30

Gothenburg, Sweden.

Email: agnes.cornell@pol.gu.se

Introduction

How can candidates and parties seek to win votes with clientelistic strategies if

they lack the organizational

1

infrastructure of a stable party? Door-to-door

efforts quickly become cost ineff‌icient, and credibility problems escalate. This

paper argues that including bureaucrats in the analysis helps to elucidate how

clientelism can operate absent stable parties with strong base units. As

Kitschelt (2000) and others have pointed out (e.g., Levitsky, 2003), the scale

and effectiveness of clientelistic strategies depend on the organizational

capacity and infrastructure of the political party. Party organization affects the

number of voters that can be reached, the credibility of the promises of future

targeted goods, and determines the extent to which the party can monitor

voters’behavior at the polls on election day. All told, the implication would

seem to be that where parties have little or no organizational infrastructure,

candidates will at best be able to engage in simple vote buying: handouts

distributed at rallies or through door-to-door canvassing. Scaling up cli-

entelism would seem diff‌icult under such conditions, as parties inject cred-

ibility and predictability in these informal exchanges.

Bureaucrats, by merit of their discretionary power in the implementation of

policies and allocation of government benef‌its, permits, and services, can

direct the f‌low of government resources selectively. That bureaucrats do

participate in partisan efforts using government resources to win elections is

by now well-substantiated (Gingerich, 2013;Hicken & Nathan, 2020;

Oliveros 2016,2021;Robinson & Verdier, 2013). Our theoretical model,

however, provides an account of why bureaucrats broker even when they are

not strongly tied to a party organization. We argue that bureaucrats may at

times play a more independent role using their own connections, and in

particular connections to organized sectors of society. Civil society associ-

ations provide the organizational structure that can enhance eff‌iciency in any

efforts requiring coordination, including clientelistic exchanges (Cornell &

Grimes, 2015;Holland & Palmer-Rubin, 2015;Rueda, 2015).

The argument builds on and adds to recent observations regarding the

considerable variability in brokers (Hicken & Nathan, 2020). Conventionally

construed as party loyalists, recent literature brings to light that brokers can

also be entirely non-partisan (Gottlieb & Larreguy, 2020;Holland & Palmer-

Rubin, 2015;Novaes, 2018). In some instances, non-partisan brokers have

strong ties to a specif‌ic interest organization, but may also act independently,

campaigning for a candidate on an ad hoc basis. We argue in a similar way that

bureaucrats with brokering ambitions may have ties to parties, politicians, or

to civil society organizations, and that these connections shape their capacity

to broker.

We employ data from an original survey of 1300 bureaucrats in a weak

party context: all 25 regional governments in Peru plus the city of Lima. Many

Cornell and Grimes 789

bureaucrats have secure tenures but politicians have some degree of control

over bureaucrats’career advancements. The empirical analyses examine

implications derived from our theoretical account of the incentives and

strategies for brokering bureaucrats, and specif‌ically whether bureaucrats with

connections to parties, to civil society, or to politicians, are more likely to

exhibit brokering behavior than those who do not have such connections.

Parties are weak but regional variation exists and citizen involvement in civil

society organizations also varies. The analyses thus also examine whether the

party and associational landscape conditions brokering among bureaucrats.

The empirical analyses indicate that bureaucrats with connections to civil

society are more likely to exhibit brokering behavior than those lacking such

connections; they are more likely to have been contacted by citizens with

requests for targeted problem solving—a behavior observed as highly

prevalent among brokers in other settings (Nichter, 2018)—and they also to a

greater extent engage in voter mobilization. Party connections only predict

voter mobilization. Bureaucrats’political connections also predict brokering,

but only in regions where civil society is strong. Our study thus suggests that

bureaucrats play an instrumental role in clientelistic exchanges, and that the

link between bureaucrats and civil society associations may structure these

exchanges.

Brokering Bureaucrats and Connections to Politicians and Parties

Clientelism entails considerable moral hazard for all actors involved (Camp,

2017;Robinson & Verdier, 2013;Stokes, 2005;Stokes et al., 2013). Parties

courting voters with targeted benef‌its risk that voters will vote for a competitor

once in the booth. Similarly, voters have little recourse to hold incumbents

accountable if benef‌its promised during campaigns do not materialize after

elections. Nichter (2018) calls this the dual credibility problem. To complicate

matters further, the politician-broker dyad entails similar enforcement

problems since brokers can shirk as well (e.g., Larreguy et al., 2017;Stokes

et al., 2013). If brokers have stable ties to voters, they can defect and back a

different candidate (Holland & Palmer-Rubin, 2015). The solution to both

problems pointed to in much previous research lies in the role of stable

political parties with extensive grassroots manpower and organizational in-

frastructure. Parties reduce the costs and risks of clientelistic exchanges by

providing credible promises to voters and either inducing loyalty or devising

and deploying enforcement strategies that dissuade voters from reneging at the

polls (Hicken & Nathan, 2020;Larreguy et al. 2016,2017;Mares & Young,

2016;Nichter, 2008;Rueda, 2017;Stokes, 2005). Clientelistic parties develop

relations of reciprocity, dependency and loyalty between politicians, brokers,

and citizens, and amass the reputational capital that allows them to retain old

and court new supporters (Auyero, 2000,2001).

790 Comparative Political Studies 56(6)