Clientelism a Stumbling Block for Democratization?

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14547511
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Kristin Seffer
• Subject Matter: Other Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 204, Vol. 42 No. 5, September 2015, 198–215

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14547511

© 2014 Latin American Perspectives

198

Clientelism a Stumbling Block for Democratization?

Lessons from Mexico

by

Kristin Seffer

Clientelism is a form of social conflict management and as such is more than mere vote

buying or a way of undermining rational-legal systems. Integrating clientelism into the

debate over the transition to democracy makes it possible to explain the outcomes of stag-

nating political transition processes. Under the condition of labor surplus, clientelism

hinders political inclusion by undermining the class-based organizations that might chal-

lenge the privileged access of the elite to resources. Consideration of clientelism helps

explain the case of Mexico, which has been classified as a deviant case in transition research

because two transition processes there, at the beginning and the end of the twentieth cen-

tury, did not end in complete democratization.

El clientelismo es una forma de gestión del conflicto social y, como tal, es algo más que

la mera compra de votos o una manera de socavar los sistemas racional-legales. La inte-

gración de clientelismo en el debate sobre la transición a la democracia hace posible expli-

car los resultados de procesos de transición política estancados. Bajo la condición de mano

de obra excedente, el clientelismo dificulta la inclusión política, socavando las organizacio-

nes de clase que podría desafiar el acceso privilegiado de la élite a los recursos. Reflexión

sobre el clientelismo ayuda a explicar el caso de México, que ha sido clasificado como un

caso anormal en la investigación de transición debido a que dos procesos de transición allí,

al principio y al final del siglo XX, no resultaron en la democratización completa.

Keywords: Clientelism, Corporatism, Transition, Democratization, Mexico

The aim of this article is to contribute to the debate on the transition to

democracy by focusing on clientelism. Although clientelism has been related in

this debate to the phenomenon of grey-zone (neither fully democratic nor

authoritarian) regimes, the concept is used and understood in varying ways. A

focus on the way major social conflicts are managed in a political regime allows

clientelism to be systematically integrated into this debate. Via clientelism, it is

possible to explain the outcomes of stagnating political transition processes.

The main argument of this article is that, under the condition of labor surplus,

clientelism and corporatism, its institutionalized form, hinder political inclu-

sion by undermining the class-based organizations that might challenge the

privileged access to resources of the elite. This argument requires that

Kristin Seffer is a senior researcher at Leipzig University. Her research focuses on transition pro-

cesses and development theory. She has undertaken extended fieldwork in Mexico. She thanks

the editors, Heidrun Zinecker, and Hannes Warnecke for important comments on various ver-

sions of this article and Forrest Kilimnik for his editing work.

547511LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X14547511Latin American PerspectivesSeffer / Clientelism And Democratization In Mexico

research-article2014

Seffer / CLIENTELISM AND DEMOCRATIZATION IN MEXICO 199

clientelism be understood as more than mere vote buying and as analytically

disentangled from the traditional landlord-peasant relationship.

The transition debate started with the publication of Transitions from

Authoritarian Rule (O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, 1986). During the

1980s, political change and regime opening were observed in many Eastern

European, Asian, and Latin American countries. There was little doubt that

democratization would be the outcome of regime change triggered by a “dom-

ino effect” (Huntington, 1991: 100). In the 1990s, while various researchers

developed models to differentiate stages of democratic transition and the con-

ditions necessary to reach a higher level of democracy, they also began to ques-

tion the correlation between authoritarian breakdown and democratization

(see, for example, O’Donnell, 1994). A turn occurred in the debate as countries

that had previously been considered new democracies were depicted in bleaker

terms as illiberal pseudo- or delegative democracies (see Collier and Levitsky,

1997; Merkel, 2004; O’Donnell, 1994). Other writers introduced the term “hybrid

regime” to describe incomplete democratization (Karl, 1995; Zinecker, 2009).

Related to this debate, the concept of clientelism has been considered in explain-

ing transition processes and grey-zone regimes. Some political scientists see

clientelism as a structural feature that disappears with modernization and

democratization or as an authoritarian relict of the transition process (Merkel,

2004: 54; see Mouzelis, 1978: 481, for a conflicting view). According to others,

clientelism is neither authoritarian nor democratic (Fox, 1994a; Zinecker, 2009).

Most recently a debate has arisen among political science approaches that per-

ceive clientelism as a form of vote buying (see Piattoni, 2001b, and Kitschelt

and Wilkinson, 2007, but also Magaloni, 2006). Accordingly, it is seen as an

interest-maximizing exchange of resources for political votes that changes over

time and with different types of regime (Piattoni, 2001a: 11). Although studies

focusing on vote buying (see, for example, Medina and Stokes, 2002; Piattoni,

2001b) are important for their revelation of democratic deficits, they do not

explain why transitions to democracy occur or why they get stuck in the grey

zone between authoritarianism and democracy.

Anthropologists consider clientelism to exist in all societies, independent of

their degree of modernity, and as more than mere vote buying (Combes, 2011;

Hicken, 2011; Van de Walle, 2007: 50). Originally, in the 1960s and 1970s, they

considered it associated with developing countries and modernization

(Kerkvliet and Scott, 1977; Legg and Lemarchand, 1972; Maquet, 1961; Médard,

1976; Powell, 1970; Spittler, 1977). Accordingly, clientelism was assumed to be

prevalent in societies based on traditional agricultural structures with landed

oligarchies and without centralized state administration and centrally orga-

nized military and police forces. In a society with a modernized agricultural

sector and an elite no longer dependent on loyal peasants (Kerkvliet and Scott,

1977: 454–455),1 clientelism was assumed to disappear. This socioeconomic

dimension is not of concern in functional rational-choice-dominated political

science debates on transition processes.2

Clientelism is a vague and overstretched concept (Collier and Mahon, 1993:

846; Sartori, 1970: 1034–1049), and this undermines its explanatory potential.

Hilgers (2011: 569), using a rational-choice understanding of clientelism to dis-

tinguish it from neighboring concepts, pleads for a specification of clientelism