Political Control of Bureaucracies as an Incentive for Party Behavior

Abstract

Clientelism, the practice of wooing voters with particularistic payoffs rather than programmatic policies, is a scourge of many contemporary democracies, and may substantially undercut the will and capacity of political elites to address broad societal issues such as inequality or underdevelopment. Recent years have seen renewed interest in exploring clientelism as a social and political phenomenon (e.g., Stokes et al., 2013), as well as understanding the factors that might induce, propel or prevent parties from transitioning to more programmatic approaches to contests in the electoral arena (Keefer, 2007; Weitz-Shapiro, 2012). The bulk of this latter strand of research explores the economic conditions that constitute more, or less, fertile soil for clientelism (Hicken, 2011; Weitz-Shapiro, 2012). This chapter draws on research from the field of public administration (e.g., Peters and Pierre, 2004; Dahlström et al., 2012; Grindle, 2012), and argues that the institutional framework structuring the interface between input (policy making) and output (policy implementing) institutions in the political system is a crucial component in political parties’ choices of whether to attract voters via clientelistic or via programmatic linkage strategies. In doing so, this chapter seeks to contribute to the investigation of the interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between specific institutional arrangements on the one hand, and parties’ choices of linkage strategies with voters on the other (Geddes, 1994; Shefter, 1994).