Lecture 8: Distortions for Votes - Clientelism and Corruption Flashcards
A short-term bias Developmental Tasks Democracies Are Particularly Bad At
Key Challenge: Long-Term Bias in Democracies
Short-Term Bias:
Politicians focus on re-election in 4 years, which leads to prioritizing short-term goals over long-term needs.
Important issues like climate change or pensions for aging populations are often neglected.
Commitment Problems:
Future governments may cancel long-term investments, especially if successors prefer to claim credit for their own ideas rather than continue previous policies.
Example:
Climate Change: Long-term challenges like addressing climate change are particularly difficult for democracies to tackle effectively due to short-term political pressures.
Developmental Tasks Democracies Struggle With Key Challenges in Democracies
Electoral Cycle:
Voter Bias: Voters remember recent events more sharply, leading politicians to focus on short-term economic boosts before elections.
Example: In Uttar Pradesh, India, unpaid electricity bills spike during election years as politicians provide forbearance to gain electoral support.
Concrete Bias:
Visible vs. Hidden Investments: Politicians often focus on visible projects (e.g., concrete buildings) to gain votes, while neglecting less visible but essential tasks like teacher training, management, or maintenance.
Example: In Africa, democratization led to more children in school due to the abolition of school fees, but there was insufficient investment in quality education (e.g., teacher training).
Clientelism
Definition:
Clientelism is the exchange of material benefits for political support, typically involving an unequal exchange between patrons (politicians) and clients (voters).
Key Points:
Neutral Rules Broken in Practice:
While rules (e.g., access to healthcare) exist on paper, they are often manipulated by politicians and bureaucrats using discretion to control who gets access based on political loyalty.
Quid Pro Quo:
A system where political support is traded for material benefits, creating unequal power dynamics between politicians and voters.
Varieties of Clientelism:
Patronage: Distributing public jobs based on political loyalty, undermining meritocracy.
Vote-buying: Offering gifts, cash, or services in exchange for votes.
Relational: Long-term relationships based on trust between political parties and voters.
Key Impacts of Clientelism
Private Goods Over Public Goods:
Clientelism focuses on providing handouts (private goods) rather than investing in long-term public goods like infrastructure.
Weakened Bureaucratic Autonomy:
A patronage-driven bureaucracy lacks independence, leading to inefficiencies (e.g., in Brazil, student test scores decline when new political parties replace teachers).
Lack of Accountability:
Voters are compelled to support their political patron, undermining the ability to choose the best candidate and reversing democratic accountability.
Unstable Property Rights:
Property rights protection becomes unreliable, with examples like Côte d’Ivoire where land rights depend on political allegiance, favoring supporters of the ruling party.
Are Bureaucrats to Blame?
Donors may try to reduce clientelism through capacity-building programs (training, new systems, revising rules).
However, these efforts may only make bureaucracies more efficient at operating within a clientelist system, as political incentives remain unchanged.
Are Voters to Blame?
Voters often demand clientelism when there is no viable alternative.
Although they may distrust the promises made, they know they will receive material rewards in exchange for their vote, thus perpetuating the system.
Programmatic Politics vs. Clientelism
Definition: Politicians offer distinct policies and public goods aimed at addressing specific needs of different groups.
Targeting: Programs are targeted based on socioeconomic characteristics (e.g., policies for women or the poor), rather than on political behavior (e.g., voting patterns).
Objective: Focuses on broad public interests and equitable policy distribution, unlike clientelism which relies on personal exchanges for political support.
Key Difference:
Clientelism: Exchange of material benefits for political support, often favoring certain groups based on loyalty.
Programmatic Politics: Policies based on the objective needs of groups, independent of their political support.
How Democracy Affects Clientelism:
Encouraging Programmatic Politics:
Democracy encourages political parties to adopt programmatic approaches, offering broad appeals to the public through public goods.
Competitive Clientelism:
Democracy can lead to ‘competitive clientelism’, where political competition leads to greater use of clientelistic practices, with incumbents gaining an advantage due to access to state resources for clientelism.
Example: Nigeria and Kenya.
How Corruption Harms Development:
Wasting Scarce Resources:
Diverts funds from essential sectors like healthcare or education.
Example: Uganda (1991-95) – Only 13% of budgeted funds reached schools.
Global Cost: US$3.6 trillion per year, or 5% of global GDP.
Discouraging Investment and Merit:
Corruption delays or prevents completion of projects.
Bureaucrats pay for jobs that allow corrupt practices.
Weakening Institutions:
Corruption undermines the rule of law.
Example: Bangladesh (Rana Plaza collapse, 2013) – Corruption led to safety violations.
Undermining Trust:
Corruption erodes public trust in institutions.
Example: Bárcenas scandal in Spain (2013).
Corruption as a Symptom:
Corruption may stem from weak institutions and weak states rather than being the root cause.
Anti-corruption campaigns may not solve the problem if state institutions remain weak.
Corruption in Developing Countries - A Double-Edged Sword
Corruption Can Be Useful to Citizens in Developing Countries:
Protecting Property Rights:
Paying off authorities (e.g., police) ensures protection for investments.
Corrupt Politicians Can Enforce Policies:
Corrupt leaders may deliver projects that non-corrupt candidates can’t, using bribery and sometimes violence.
Voters often support corrupt politicians if they get things done, even if 10% is stolen, the remaining 90% may still be beneficial.
Campaign Financing:
In countries with no public funding, corruption becomes a crucial source of electoral campaign financing, ensuring political competition.
Normalization of Corruption:
Corruption can become an informal institution and may be widely accepted in certain societies.
Example: Over a third of people in Mexico and Nigeria believe paying bribes is acceptable.
Note: While corruption may address immediate needs, it sustains systemic issues and hinders long-term institutional development.
If corruption is systemic, a social norm, and a symptom of deeper problems:
‘Corrupt’ countries can develop quickly
If investment happens despite corruption
o The corrupt have their investments protected
If the weakness of the state and institutions is addressed by deeper political processes
Does democracy increase corruption?
New democracies have weak institutions:
o More competition -> More electoral financing needed -> More corruption
o Authoritarian Kenya was less corrupt because leaders limited corruption to ‘enlarge the pie’
o Democracy makes corruption ‘visible’: NGOs and Free Media
Undermining legitimacy
