Declared Support and Clientelism

• Author: Simeon Nichter,Salvatore Nunnari
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211066208
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(13) 2178–2216

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211066208

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Declared Support and

Clientelism

Simeon Nichter

1

and Salvatore Nunnari

2

Abstract

Recent studies of clientelism predominantly focus on how elites use rewards

to inf‌luence vote choices and turnout. This article shifts attention toward

citizens and their choices beyond the ballot box. Under what conditions does

clientelism inf‌luence citizens’decisions to express political preferences

publicly? When voters can obtain post-election benef‌its by declaring support

for victorious candidates, their choices to display political paraphernalia on

their homes or bodies may ref‌lect more than just political preferences. We

argue that various factors—such as the size of rewards and punishments, the

competitiveness of the election, and whether multiple candidates employ

clientelism—affect citizens’propensity to declare support in response to

clientelist inducements. Building on insights from f‌ieldwork, formal analyses

reveal how and why such factors can distort patterns of political expression

observed during electoral campaigns. We conduct an experiment in Brazil,

which predominantly corroborates predictions about declared support and

clientelism.

Keywords

elections, public opinion, voting behavior, experimental research, corruption

and patronage, Latin American politics

1

University of California, San Diego, USA

2

Bocconi University, Milano, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Simeon Nichter, Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego, Social

Sciences Building 301, 9500 Gilman Drive, #0521, La Jolla, CA 92093-0521, USA.

Email: nichter@ucsd.edu

Introduction

In many parts of the world, citizens receive material benef‌its in contingent

exchange for providing political support. A cross-national survey of 1400

experts found that such patterns of “clientelism”exist to some degree in over

90% of countries, with clientelist efforts reaching “moderate”or “major”

levels in nearly three-fourths of nations (Kitschelt, 2013). This phenomenon is

widely recognized to have a broad range of consequences for democracy and

development. Clientelism often exacerbates political inequalities by allowing

those with resources to buy votes from impoverished citizens and undermines

representation when vote choices no longerref‌lect recipients’political preferences

(Stokes et al., 2013). Moreover, clientelism is frequently linked to numerous

maladies that can stif‌le development, such as the under-provision of publicgoods,

increased rent seeking, and expanded public def‌icits (Hicken, 2011).

The literature on clientelism tends to focus on the choices of elites more

than those of citizens. Traditional studies explored patron–client relationships

involving highly asymmetric power. Voters in these relationships often had

limited autonomy to make choices of their own volition, due to various factors

such as restrictive land-tenure arrangements and the lack of ballot secrecy

(Scott, 1972;Baland & Robinson, 2008). While some contemporary studies

recognize clients’heightened autonomy (e.g., Hilgers, 2012;Auerbach &

Thachil, 2018), the formal and quantitative literature continues to pay far

greater attention to the choices of political elites. Particularly emblematic of

this tendency, many analysts concentrate on the supply-side logic by which

politicians and their representatives target citizens when distributing cam-

paign handouts. For instance, Stokes (2005) contends that elites reward

weakly opposed voters for vote-switching, whereas Nichter (2008) argues

they reward nonvoting supporters for showing up at the polls. This elite-

targeting focus is extended in various studies motivated by Stokes et al.

(2013), who argue that party leaders’efforts to target weakly opposed voters

are hindered by brokers who channel rewards to supporters. Other inf‌luential

examples that predominantly focus on elites include studies on the targeting of

reciprocal voters (Finan & Schechter, 2012), on the optimal combination of

multiple clientelist strategies (Gans-Morse et al., 2014), and on the broader

targeting of distributive benef‌its (Dixit & Londregan, 1996).

While such research has greatly enhanced our understanding of clientelism,

it sheds relatively less light on the role of citizen choices. Voter choice de-

serves greater attention, especially because some qualitative work underscores

citizens’substantial autonomy in various contexts. Indeed, scholars have long

argued that politicians’control of contingent exchanges varies and may well

be in decline (Scott, 1972). A principal contribution of the present study is its

central focus on citizen choices in contexts with clientelism, testing formal

predictions with an online experiment in Brazil. In particular, we investigate

Nichter and Nunnari 2179

the following question: Under what conditions does clientelism inf‌luence

citizens’decisions to express political preferences publicly? Our analysis

reveals how and why citizens will often make distinct choices in different

contexts and thus underscores that their willingness to participate in cli-

entelism should not be taken for granted.

In addition to this emphasis on citizen choices, another key contribution is

investigating how clientelism can induce political expression beyond the

ballot box. Unlike some qualitative studies, formal and quantitative work on

clientelism tends to focus more narrowly on voting. By contrast, we examine

why citizens publicly express support for political candidates, through actions

such as displaying campaign paraphernalia on their homes, on their bodies,

and at rallies. Many studies consider such activities to be important forms of

democratic participation, which enable citizens to express their political

preferences and potentially inf‌luence the selection of leaders (Verba & Nie,

1972;Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995). We argue that in much of the world,

clientelism presents another understudied motivation. When voters can obtain

post-election benef‌its by declaring support for victorious candidates, their

decisions to participate publicly often ref‌lect more than just political prefer-

ences. As explored below, various factors affect citizens’propensity to declare

support in response to clientelist inducements.For instance, citizens may deem

it especially advantageous to declare support for a clientelist candidate who

distributes large rewards, is likely to win the election, and can easily observe

declarations. But citizens may also balk at declaringfor that candidate if doing

so is costly: it might be challenging to obtain campaign materials or travel to

rallies, citizens might prefer another candidate ideologically, or they might live

in neighborhoodswhere declaring for that candidate involves social costs.And

in some contexts, citizens might even face punishments if they declare support

for a candidate who loses the election. By exploring such dynamics of cli-

entelism, thepresent study not only shifts the lensof analysis to citizen choices,

but also broadens its scope to actions beyond voting.

Recent research points to yet another important reason to investigate

declared support: it may play a crucial role in the survival of “relational

clientelism”—that is, ongoing exchange relationships that extend beyond

election campaigns. Nichter (2018) argues that when the state fails to provide

an adequate social safety net, citizens are often motivated to sustain ongoing

exchange relationships with politicians who mitigate their vulnerability. By

declaring support, citizens alleviate a credibility problem that threatens the

viability of relational clientelism: citizens mitigate politicians’concerns about

whether to trust their vote promises in contexts with ballot secrecy. Consistent

with this link between declared support and vulnerability, Bobonis et al.

(2019) f‌ind that declarations increase amidst negative rainfall shocks. Despite

their contributions, such studies ignore how other contextual factors might

affect citizens’declarations; they instead undertake measures to control for

2180 Comparative Political Studies 55(13)