Beyond poverty: A cultural Analysis of the Persistence of Clientelism

Paper prepared for presentation at the Workshop
30 Years of Democracy in Brazil
April 20, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, South Bend
Beyond poverty: A cultural Analysis of the Persistence of Clientelism
Mariana Borges
Northwestern University
MarianaBorges2011@u.norhtwester.edu
Abstract: Why does clientelism endure even after voters’ standard of living has improved? Current
analyses of clientelism emphasize the importance of material determinants, specifically low levels of
income among voters, to explain the persistence of clientelism. These approaches predict that changes in
income levels will lead to a shift away from clientelism. To test the strength of material inducements to
explain the endurance of clientelism, I look at classical cases of political machines (Chicago, Rio de Janeiro
and Sertão of Bahia) in which voters’ material resources have changed and analyze if and how clientelism
survives. The endurance of clientelistic practices in these cases puts the importance of material
inducements into question. I argue that clientelistic practices survives despite significant social changes
because the symbolic meanings attached to these practices still resonates with voters’ understanding of
politics, that I call the clientelistic logic. Voters engage in exchanges with patrons not only because of
material rewards but also because this is the way they understand what politics is about. Clientelistic
practices are meaningful in reference to a clientelistic logic in which politics are perceived as a way of
gaining access to personal benefits through the brokerage of politicians. Based on my on ethnographic
work at Sertão of Bahia and on other ethnographic accounts, I present the different ways in which
clientelistic practices are conducted by politicians and voters and how these practices entail meanings
that are congruent with a clientelistic understanding of politics.
[Draft: Please do not cite without the author’s permission.]
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Introduction
Taking a cab in São Paulo can be a very instructive experience, especially when cab drivers discover that
you are a political scientist. Avid radio listeners and well informed about political news, cab drivers in São
Paulo often have political opinions that they are willing to share with a young political scientist. In one of
these rides, I got the chance to talk with a cab driver whose hometown was a small city in the interior of
Bahia, something common for the city of São Paulo which was for a long time the destination of many
immigrants from the poor northeast (Nordeste) region of Brazil. This cab driver from Bahia told me: “You
know, back in my hometown, folks are so poor that they sell their vote for a bag of cement”. Although the
cab driver was a nordestino himself, he was reverberating an idea that led to manifestations of racism on
social media1 against nordestinos after the announcement of the reelection of the president Dilma
Rousseff from the Workers’ Party. As Rousseff had a higher percentage of votes from the Northeast
region, the racist posts on social media accused poor nordestinos of selling their votes in exchange for a
“meal and a bottle of water”, an implicit reference to the conditional cash transfer programs implemented
by the Workers’ Party government.
The idea underlying the racists comments on social media against nordestinos relates poverty with
clientelism. This is not only widespread commonsense, but is also present in the media and in leading
academic works about clientelism. These works emphasize the decisive role of material inducements to
gather political support for clientelistic politicians. By relating the socioeconomic situation of poor voters
with a greater likelihood to accept bribes from politicians, materialist-based approaches reinforces the
idea that clientelism is poor people’s politics. This article tests this relationship by looking at cases of
political machines that experienced significant changes of the income level of voters. If this relationship is
true, then rising living standards of voters should lead to the demise of clientelistic practices. My own
1
The tumblr http://essesnordestinos.tumblr.com/ compiled some of the racist manifestations against nordestinos
that appeared on social media after the results of the first round of the Brazilian presidential runoff in 2014.
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research at Sertão of Bahia and ethnographic accounts about machine politicians of Chicago and Rio de
Janeiro show how and why clientelistic practices survive despite the improvement of voters’ living
standards that have significantly reduced the dependency of clients on patrons. In my own research I use
ethnographic methods and I draw on evidence from other ethnographic accounts because ethnography
pays particular attention to how broader social phenomena affect individuals in their everyday lives and
to the meanings individuals attribute to their political reality (Schatz 2009, 5).
The cases analyzed in this article show that machine politicians do adapt to new socioeconomic
environments in which their power to induce voters’ compliance is significantly reduced. However,
clientelistic practices persist. I argue that the survival of clientelistic practices is due to the fact that the
symbolic meanings embedded in clientelistic exchange, what I call the clientelistic logic, still resonates
with voters and politicians in places in which political machines prevails. More than actually buying votes,
these practices are a form of meaning-making in which clients and patrons put into practice their
understanding of politics. Clientelistic practices are not only a way of politicians to communicate with
voters’ understanding of politics, but also a way to create new meanings that reverberate with cultural
references of voters that are congruent with the clientelistic logic. By identifying clientelism as a cultural
practice, I challenge dominant materialist-based explanations of clientelism persistence. A cultural
understanding of clientelism leads to a broader conceptualization of this practice that approximates it to
other political practices that are normally analyzed as different political phenomena, such as lobbying.
The materialist approach to clientelism
The story of the cab driver about how politics work back in his poor hometown in Bahia where “people
sell their vote for a bag of cement” is also the short version of the explanations that most studies about
clientelism give why voters support machine politicians. Scholars from different theoretical traditions
relate poverty to clientelism defending the idea that the distribution of handouts by politicians do indeed
buy the political support of poor voters. At least three different theoretical approaches emphasize the
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role of material inducements as the main reason why voters support machine politicians: (i) the
sociological, (ii) the economic and (ii) the reciprocity approach. Although these divergent groups of
scholars agree that material inducements are the main causal variable behind voters’ support for machine
politicians, each of them has a different causal mechanism to explain why the good exchanged matters.
These diverse causal mechanisms are also related to different ways of understanding the dynamics of the
relationship between patrons and clients. Within the rational choice approach monitoring and enforcing
mechanisms are constitutive elements of the clientelistic exchange (Stokes 2005; Nichter 2008; Kitschelt
and Wilkinson 2007), however within reciprocity approaches clientelism may exist in the absence of such
mechanism (Lawson and Greene 2014; Finan and Schechter 2012). Despite these different causal
mechanisms, a common cause for clientelism, poverty, unifies these divergent approaches.
The first generation of scholars that analyzed clientelism, what I call the sociological approach, considered
the material dependency of clients on patrons as the basis on which this exchange relied (Scott and
Kerkvliet 1977; Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1981; Scott 1972). According to Scott & Kerkvliet “patron
client exchange falls somewhere on the continuum between personal bonds joining equals and purely
coercive bonds” (Scott and Kerkvliet 1977, 442). For these authors, if clients recognize the exchange with
patrons as fair then they tend to reciprocate voluntarily. Even though, an imbalance in the exchange in
favor of patrons always exist, for Scott clients are able to judge if the exchange is exploitive or not because
they have a sense of the balance of exchange (Scott 1972). This sense of fairness of the balance of the
exchange will depend of how each side evaluates what is being exchanged, that is, how critical are the
goods for each part, the extent in which each part monopolize these goods and the ability of each side to
deliver these goods. The more critical the goods are for clients, the better is the position of the patron,
especially if clients have no alternative than complying in order to secure subsistence goods. For Scott &
Kerkvliet (1977) the use of coercion comes with the cost of patrons losing legitimacy and active loyalty.
Material determinants, therefore, play a crucial role here. They determine not only clients’ compliance
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but also the extent to which compliance is expected to be voluntary or if patrons are likely to rely on
coercive mechanisms.
The second wave of studies, as Stokes highlights, is more informed by economic theories than by
anthropological approaches (Stokes 2007). Scholars within this tradition perceive the clientelistic
exchange as a pure economic one in which the lack of resources of voters is the main reason why poor
individuals accept to trade their votes for material goods (Stokes et al. 2013, 185; Kitschelt and Wilkinson
2007, 25–26; Weitz-Shapiro 2012). This approach assumes that the preference of poor voters is at odds
with the clientelistic exchange, because if it was not the urgency to access these goods offered by
politicians, they would vote for a politician whose program they would prefer (Stokes et al. 2013, 185;253).
The economic approach predicts, therefore, that with the rising income level of voters “the treat or bribe
appears to be more and more trivial, we would expect the voter to be more willing to register support for
the party whose program is most attractive” (Stokes et al. 2013, 185). Because of the assumption that the
preferences of poor voters is not in line with the bargain implied in the clientelistic exchange, clients
comply not because the goods received generate good will but because they fear being punished (Stokes
2005). The assumption that the preferences of clients and patrons are at odds leads to the advancement
of a specific understanding of clientelism which differentiates itself from other non-programmatic
distribution of goods by the fact that clients only receive the goods on the condition that they deliver their
political (Stokes 2005; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007). In order to assure the contingent aspect of the
clientelistic exchange and avoid that clients will take the good and support whoever they want, patrons
need to monitor voter’s behavior and punish defectors. Therefore, for scholars within this tradition,
clientelism only exists when there is contingency and it is necessary to monitor voters’ behavior and
punish defectors in order to have a contingent exchange. Given these distinctive features of clientelism
recent studies of this phenomena pay particular attention to the forms in which patrons enforce the
contingent aspect of the exchange by testing and theorizing the different ways in which patrons monitor
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clients’ behavior (Nichter 2008; Gans-Morse, Mazzuca, and Nichter 2014; Chandra 2007; GonzalezOcantos et al. 2012; Szwarcberg 2012) and punish defectors (Magaloni, Diaz-Cayeros, and Estevez 2007;
Szwarcberg 2012).
A third group of scholars raises the question whether the model of clientelism advanced by the economic
approach can be sustained given the difficulty politicians have in monitoring voters’ behavior in places
where the ballot secrecy is enforced (Lawson and Greene 2014). For this approach, the distribution of
goods by patrons generates feelings of obligation among voters that leads them to give their political
support for patrons voluntarily (Finan and Schechter 2012; Lawson and Greene 2014). Therefore, for the
reciprocity approach, clientelism can persist without mechanisms of enforcement of voters’ behavior. The
difference, therefore, between the economic and the reciprocity approach is whether material
inducements offered by patrons are able to induce the preferences of clients to be in line with the
preferences of the patrons. For the reciprocity approach material inducements do make the preferences
between patrons and clients congruent and the bigger the value of the good for clients the stronger the
feelings of indebtedness towards the patron.
These three approaches, therefore, differ in the way material inducements lead voters to support machine
politicians. For the sociological and the reciprocity approaches, the value of the good for clients might
lead them to give their support for patrons voluntarily. For the economic model, however, by assumption,
clients’ preferences are at odds with patrons’ preferences and voters accept bribes only because they
need them given their lack of resources. The three approaches, then, relate clientelism with poverty,
clientelism is poor people’s politics for these three groups of scholars. Although the reciprocity approach
recognizes that the diminishing power of patrons in places where they cannot control voters’ behavior is
not enough to explain the demise of clientelism, the question of this paper is whether clientelism can
survive even if voter’s level of income rises. Differently put, is clientelism really only politics for the poor?
To test the link between poverty and clientelism, I will look at cases of classic political machines that have
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undergone significant socioeconomic changes including the level of power of patrons and the income level
of clients to determine whether these changes have indeed reduced clientelism as materialist-based
approaches would predict.
Testing the materialist hypothesis
Do clientelistic practices survive in places where the voter’s level of income has increased? Do machine
politicians thrive when the dependency ties linking them with voters collapse? Do political machines
target only poor voters? To answer these questions which raise doubt about the force of material
inducements in explaining clientelism, I look in this section at two cases of political machines that have
undergone significant socioeconomic changes, the Chicago machine in the 1970’s and the contemporary
case of one of the poorest region of Brazil, the Sertão of Bahia. I also look at the case of Rio de Janeiro in
which the level of income of voters varies among the dwellers of the community. By looking at these
cases, I attempt to show not only how the socioeconomic changes affected the power of patrons and
voters, but also how these political machines adapted to the changing environment. These cases show
that clientelistic practices are still thriving despite the fact that political bosses become much less powerful
and voters are much less dependent on politicians. For the cases of Chicago and Rio de Janeiro I will use
ethnographic accounts and for the Sertão of Bahia2 my own ethnographical research.
2
I did an ethnographic research at Sertão of Bahia from August to December 2014, which enabled me to observe
the campaign for national and state level offices. As my initial goal was to observe the impact that the arrival at
power of a leftist programmatic party had on the political culture and practices of poor people, I lived during these
months with a family in a poor neighborhood in one of the recent built public housing projects. During this time, I
observed the everyday life of the dwellers of the public housing project, attended social gatherings and political
rallies and interviewed some of them. I also closely followed the political life of the local Workers’ Party; I attended
several meetings of the party and followed party activists during campaign events throughout the region such as
canvassing and rallies. I also interviewed party leaders and activists formally and informally. During the last three
weeks of the campaign, I closely followed two candidates of the Workers’ Party; I sat with them in their car when
traveling to other cities and rural communities and observed their canvassing activities, rallies, public speeches,
meetings with community associations, their interactions with other politicians and their staff. The names of the
politicians and dwellers of Sertão of Bahia I use in this article are fictitious to preserve their anonymity.
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The first example of a machine that has undergone significant social changes is the Regular Democratic
Organization of Chicago during the 1970’s as it is described by Guterbock (1980). Being the classical
example of an urban political machine of American politics, the Chicago machine is particularly interesting
for the purpose of this article because of the existence of studies describing it through different periods,
from the Gosnell’ study during the 1930’s to Guterbock’s analysis in the 1970’s (Gosnell 1935; Guterbock
1980). Guterbock presents a fine description of how different the activities and the power of the machine
in the 1970’s are in comparison to what Gosnell described during the 1930’s. Even though Gosnell in the
1930’s already noticed a decline in the power of the machine, Guterbock shows in his work how the
machine in the 1970’s lost its ability to deliver critical goods for voters.
One of the most striking changes Guterbock noted is that the machine in the 1970’s does not deliver
grants of material value anymore (Guterbock 1980, 111). The distribution of goods such as a bucket of
coal, food, free soup kitchens, money, the payment of the lawyer or of traffic tickets that was part of the
machine’s repertoire during the 1930s was completely absent in the machine Guterbock observed in the
1970’s. In the same way, machine politicians in the 1970’s do not intervene anymore in government
agencies or courts to produce outcomes in favor of their voters such as fixing criminal cases, helping to
get pensions, fixing fire code violations or enforcing segregated housing (Guterbock 1980, 102). By the
time Guterbock did his study, material grants and fixing were practically not part of the resources the
machine could use. Instead, the main services provided by the machine were the ones with lower
significance for the voters such as the provision of information of city services, legal advice, or simply
serving as an intermediary between citizens’ requests and the city agencies. For Guterborck, the
comparison of goods the machine delivered in the 1930’s and in the 1970’s shows how patronage politics
survive in spite of, rather than because of, the degree of significance of the goods it delivers (Guterbock
1980, 111). Besides, not only has the machine lost its ability to deliver valuable handouts, but now it also
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faces competition from other sources for the services it still provides. After all, citizens can contact directly
government agencies without the intermediation of party members.
Even the machine’s role as a go-between for government agencies was limited in comparison with earlier
times. The core of the aldermanic services described by Guterbock was to secure city services according
to the requests of individual voters (Guterbock 1980, 69). However, Guterbock notes that the aldermen
had very few formal authority over services. He depended on the voluntary cooperation of government
employees to have his requests attended (Guterbock 1980, 73). The alderman party and personal ties
with agency personnel were the reasons why the politician’s request was given priority. Bureaucrats were
political appointees of the machine and their careers, therefore, depended of the party. They had all the
reason to keep party notables, such as the alderman, satisfied (Guterbock 1980, 72). However, the ability
of an alderman to get things done for their voters had come under severe attack by the 1970’s. After the
Shakman decision in 1972, it become illegal to fire public employees on the base of their loyalty to the
system or a particular politician. A public employee could not be fired anymore if he failed to make political
contributions or to do political work. Even though political work and money contributions to the party
were still expected from members of the machine when Guterbock did his research, it surely become
more difficult for politicians to secure machine members’ compliance after Shakman decision. The gradual
professionalization of government agencies and a tightening supervision from the part of the state’s
attorney, who was not held by regular Democrats, also meant that those politicians who tried to intervene
in administrative procedures were under risk of public exposure and criminal prosecution (Guterbock
1980, 108–109).
Another important social change that affected the power of the machine was the decrease in the need of
help from politicians giving the rising standard of living of voters (Guterbock 1980, 93). Voters were not
as poor as they were by the 1930’s and, if the material based model of clientelism was correct, the public
demand for favors should have considerably decreased. However, this is not what Guterbock found out,
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not only was the request for favors still significant but the machine still invested a considerable amount
of resources in solving voter’s problems. According to Guterbock, the amount of service requests received
by the ward of his study was significant and comparable to the average number of requests received by
city agencies (Guterbock 1980, 91). There was also widespread use of party services. According to a survey
of the author, a third of the respondents requested a service to party agents at least once (Guterbock
1980, 97). Guterbock claims that sometimes the amount of requests was actually more than what the
alderman staff could handle (Guterbock 1980, 74). Nevertheless, during meetings with citizens or party
members, the alderman would always remember citizens to tell him their needs or problems: “If there’s
anything in your precinct that needs doing, or if one of your voters has a problem, just call me or my
assistants” (Guterbock 1980, 74).
The continuation of party services in which politicians solve voters’ individual problems despite reduced
capability of the machine to deliver valuable goods and the continuing demand for political favors from
voters calls into question the power of material inducements explanations for the survival of patronclients exchanges in Chicago in the 1970’s. However, the most telling evidence fount by Guterbock against
material-based explanations of the continuous functioning of the machine is the fact that the main users
of party services were not poor voters with low levels of education but rather individuals employed in
white collar occupations, homeowners and people from high-status ethnic groups (Guterbock 1980, 143).
The clients of the machine in Chicago are not, therefore, part of vulnerable socioeconomic groups that
depend on the help of politicians due to their lack of resources and their greater need of assistance. As I
will explain further in the next section, Guterbock uses this evidence to claim that the continuation of
party services is a way of politicians to build a record as community advocates which is one of the ways
they appeal to values that resonate with more selective voters, that is, more educated, informed and
politically active voters (Guterbock 1980, 183). Contrary to what a materialist approach towards
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clientelism would predict, when granting personal favors, machine politicians of Chicago are actually
appealing to better-off voters and not to poor voters.
The case of the alderman Marta of Roseiral3, a suburban neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, is also
illuminating for testing the strength of materialist inducements to explain clientelistic exchanges. Marta
does not operate in a machine dominated city as the aldermen of Chicago. Although there is one party,
the PMDB, which has controlled for a long period Rio de Janeiro’s state government, their control over
the local government is far from being the monopoly that the Regular Democratic Organization still
nowadays enjoys over Chicago’s city hall. In practice, this means that Marta does not have, as Chicago’s
aldermen do have, institutionalized channels within city’s agencies to solve her constituents’ problems.
The less professionalized system within which Marta operates was not, however, an obstacle for her to
become a successful clientelistic politician. With the motto “a problem has to be solved immediately” she
become a champion of votes in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Apart from the different level of professionalization of clientelistic politics, there are of course also
socioeconomic differences between Chicago and Rio de Janeiro. Roseiral is located in the northern area
of the city of Rio de Janeiro and far away from the richest and better-served neighborhoods of the
southern area. Even though among city dwellers it is common to stratify the city among two contrasting
areas, the rich southern area (zona sul) and the poor and suburban northern area (zona norte), the social
composition of Roseiral is actually heterogeneous. For Marta, this heterogeneity is crucial. Her core
constituency comes from the residential complex and not from the slums (Kuschnir 2000b, 109). She
deliberately choose to target the low middle class areas of Roseiral. According to her, slums “lack
everything” and slum dwellers are “extremely poor” (Kuschnir 2000b, 109) what makes them susceptible
3
Roseiral is a fictions name used by Kuschnir in her ethnography (Kuschnir 2000b) to refer to a real low middle class
suburban neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
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to accept money from any candidate. Therefore, she does not expect them to be loyal supporters
(Kuschnir 2000b, 110).
As in Chicago, the services offered by Marta at Roseiral are not used by the poorest segments of the
dwellers but rather by those with relative better socioeconomic status in Roseiral. Marta does receive
requests of material grants and fixing (Kuschnir 2000b, 111), which were rarer in the study of Guterbock
in Chicago. For those sorts of grants, according to Kuschnir, Marta uses her private financial resources and
her own salary to solve them. The material grants demands Marta receives are mostly requests of building
materials and sports equipment (Kuschnir 2000b, 111). The majority of requests, though, concern the
allocation of city agencies services, which is a very similar demand found by Guterbock in Chicago. For
these type of demands, Marta uses her channels within the city government and city agencies to solve
the problems related to urban infrastructure, such as water supply, public lightening, paving of roads,
felling a tree and other public services, such as assuring the registration of children in a public school
(Kuschnir 2000b, 111).
Although in Roseiral it is not possible to compare the politics before and after social changes, the
heterogeneous social composition of the neighborhood enables us to test the power of material
inducements to explain clientelism persistence. Both in Chicago and in Rio de Janeiro, clientelistic
politicians do not focus their resources in serving the poorest segments of the community. According to
materialist approaches, because of poor voters’ lack of resources, they would be the most probable target
of machine politicians. In Chicago, poor voters base their electoral support according to partisan
identification. Besides, they are mostly unaffected by the services offered by the local Regular Democratic
Organization (Guterbock 1980, 155). In Rio de Janeiro, alderman Marta avoids the slums because she
believes poor voters’ lack of resources makes them accept money from any candidate. In both examples,
those who would be more dependent of politicians’ help are not the ones target by clientelistic politicians.
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In Sertão of Bahia, one of the poorest areas of Brazil, the extreme material dependency of poor voters on
local bosses’ aid was traditionally perceived as the reason for the pervasiveness of clientelism. Within the
less urbanized regions of Brazil, such as the Sertão of Bahia, clientelism is traditionally known as
coronelismo (Leal 1975). A high rate of poverty, a large rural population allied with the semi-arid climate
of the region with prolonged periods of drought has made voters of the region particularly vulnerable and
dependent on local political bosses. Votes were easily traded for temporary water supply that were
brought by water trucks sponsored by local bosses during elections. Politicians linked with the carlista
political machine, which has controlled the government of Bahia for decades, have controlled the region
until the recent arrival of the Workers’ Party at the local power.
After the arrival of the Workers’ Party at the national government in 2002 and at the state government in
2006, which put an end with the long reign of the carlistas, the Sertão of Bahia has witnessed an
unprecedented flow of resources. Extreme poverty was considerably reduced with the universal social
policies implemented by the federal government. Permanent water supply has also significantly
expanded. The goods historically used for political bosses to buy votes, water and food, become available
for poor citizens independently of their ties with local bosses. The room for political discretion to target
resources reduced considerably as the federal government social policies, such as the conditional cash
transfer program Bolsa-Família, were implemented according to objective pre-established criteria for the
selection of beneficiaries (Sugiyama and Hunter 2013). The rising income of voters and the loss of federal
and state patronage resources was a heavy blow for the carlista machine. The 2014 elections was the
third time they failed to regain the state government that, since 2006, is now controlled by the Workers’
Party.
Certainly, there are still many problems related to poverty at Sertão of Bahia. Poor provision of health
services, unemployment, and high levels of illiteracy, drug abuse and domestic violence are still part of
the everyday reality of sertanejos. However, the redistributive social policies of the last twelve years,
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which are broader than the conditional cash transfer program, have profoundly transformed the
socioeconomic and political landscape of the Sertão of Bahia. One of the most symbolic transformations
that the sertanejos would often point out to me is how hard it is nowadays to find a mudbrick house,
which were very common in the past. With the reduction of hunger, the death of newborns as an everyday
reality become something of the past. With the increase in permanent water supply, the long walks of
more than ten kilometers to get a bucket of untreated and muddy water are not a part of their everyday
life for many of them. Beyond the obvious improvement in their living standards, the permanent water
supply and the assurance of food access through the Bolsa-Família broke the main forms of dependency
of poor voters on politicians. As a broker at Sertão explained to me right after the elections:
“Voters are very different now. They know that it is the federal government that provides the
Bolsa-Família and they are grateful for Dilma and Lula. They will vote for Dilma because of that.
Now, they will not automatically vote for your candidates for the proportional election. In the
past, they would support the whole ticket because they would follow the indication of the mayor.
Now, the reference is not local anymore. In the past, poor voters would be in front of the house
of the mayor every week asking for a market basket but this does not exist anymore because of
the Bolsa-Família. When you give voters durable goods, such as the water cisterns, this will not
hold their votes. This is the reason why in the past politicians would distribute food stamps so
that the voter would have to come and get it with them every week. Nowadays it is much more
difficult to get the votes, they become much more expansive.”
The broker’s reflection testifies that the strong dependency ties, that once characterized the relationship
between politicians and poor voters at Sertão of Bahia, has significantly weakened. Although the channels
and resources offered by politicians are still valuable goods for voters at Sertão of Bahia, it is hard to
question that voters are significantly less dependent on local bosses to fulfill their basic needs. The
empowerment of poor voters, however, has not meant that clientelism has reduced at Sertão of Bahia.
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The complaint that “votes become more expansive” was something I constantly heard from other
politicians and brokers. Voters are significantly less dependent of local bosses but the persistent
remainder I have heard about votes becoming more expansive speaks to the fact that the distribution of
material goods as a campaign strategy is still widespread, if not growing.
By following two local candidates for the state legislature, I was able to witness how the distribution of
material goods was something expected by voters from candidates. I never witnessed a politician offering
any good or service, the expectation was that the voters would ask for some help. Certainly many brokers
and politicians at Sertão of Bahia built their career by continuously helping voters to get access to public
services, such as providing transportation for voters to health facilities or scheduling health exams in
public hospitals. However, during the weeks preceding the Election Day, even politicians with a more
programmatic profile actively distribute material grants for voters.
It is important to highlight that such practices are illegal in Brazil and many traditional politicians of the
Sertão of Bahia were sentenced for vote buying practices. In a way, the control of the Brazilian justice
system over vote buying practices had the same effect of the improvement of poor voters’ living
standards. It just made politicians adapt the goods they offer. T-shirts with politicians’ logo, for example,
is the type of good that explicitly link politicians with the good handed, which makes it an easy proof of
vote buying. There is this famous case of one former mayor of the region who lost his political rights just
because of one T-shirt he handed for a voter. Politicians would tell me about the sentence of this former
mayor with a mockery tone given the pettiness of the good compared to what they normally distribute.
Consequently, T-shirts are not part of the toolkit of possible grants to be distributed anymore; politicians
prefer instead to hand out goods that leave no traces that can link the good to them, such as money or
paying for a medical exam. In the same way, with the rising income level of voters, voters do not depend
on politicians anymore to have access to basic goods. The complain that votes become more costly was
partially due to the fact that the goods demanded by voters become more expansive. Instead of a market
15
of basket, voters would demand a thousand cement bricks, for example. In the public housing project I
was living at Sertão of Bahia, cement bricks, for example, were a common demand of voters.
Even though the contexts of Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and the Sertão of Bahia differ greatly, these cases
testify the persistence of clientelistic practices within different levels of economic power of voters. In
Chicago and in Sertão of Bahia, the rising standards of living of voters affected the machine by changing
the goods voters demanded. However, it did not represent a threat to the continuation of clientelistic
exchanges as a widespread electoral strategy. The cases of Chicago and Rio de Janeiro show how
politicians that build their image as problem solvers appeal to the relatively better-off in their
communities and not to the poorest individuals. Middle-class voters in Chicago do not use machine
services because they lack resources. The need of the goods offered by patronage politicians is not what
leads voters in these different contexts to support the machine. In sum, these three cases question the
strength of material inducements to explain the persistence of clientelistic practices. Clientelism is not
only poor people’s politics.
Why ending poverty is not enough or why culture matters? The clientelistic logic of doing politics
In the previous section, the cases of Rio de Janeiro, Chicago and Sertão of Bahia showed not only how
clientelistic practices survive despite rising income level of voters and decreasing power of patrons but
also how these practices can actually be appealing to relatively better-off voters. These evidences contest
the assumptions made by materialist based approaches that machines will target the poor and the
association of clientelism with poverty. Clientelistic practices are resilient to changes in the balance of
power between patrons and brokers because a logic in which politics are perceived as a way to gain access
to personal benefits through the brokerage of politicians persists. This logic, that I call clientelistic logic, is
both a way to give meaning and to practice politics, in other words, it is a cultural practice. The assumption
that underlies a cultural analysis, such as the one advanced here, is that human beings are driven not only
16
by instrumental goals, but also by their need of meaning-making (Fligstein and McAdam 2012, 201).
Therefore, to analyze clientelism as a cultural practice I will, following Wedeen and Sewell, not only
analyze the symbolic or semiotic aspects of this logic but how these symbols generate practices and how
practices linked with clientelistic exchanges can also generate new meanings (Wedeen 2002, 714; W. H.
J. Sewell 1999, 51).
The notion of clientelism as a cultural practice makes it is possible to understand clientelism’s relative
autonomy from material inducements. Culture, according to Sewell, is not a particular kind of practice but
rather the semiotic dimension of human social practice (W. H. J. Sewell 1999, 48). Or, as Wedeen puts it,
it is a way of looking at the world (Wedeen 2002, 719). As a symbol that gives meaning for human practice,
cultural schemes are virtual and are, therefore, generalizable (W. H. Sewell Jr. 1992, 8). A semiotic code
transcends a particular context and can be put into practice in a variety of contexts (W. H. J. Sewell 1999,
51). Even when the lack of resources of clients is such that makes them dependable on patrons,
clientelistic exchanges are still embedded in webs significance that render them meaningful to actors.
Because meanings are virtual, the symbolic meanings attached to clientelism can be transposable to
situations in which the economic disparity between patrons and clients is not so acute, that is, to
situations in which clients not necessarily need the goods exchanged or to situations in which the goods
are not critical for clients.
To identify clientelism as a cultural practice does not mean, however, that material determinants are not
important to explain this political practice. In the contrary, the very definition of clientelism as cultural
practice involves gaining access to material resources. As Sewell puts, schemas should be validated by
resources if they are to be reproduced over time as well as resources’ values are justified by their
meanings (W. H. Sewell Jr. 1992, 13). In the same way, a clientelistic logic of politics can only persists as
long as there are resources that are still, at least to some extent, valuable for the actors involved. These
goods, however, to be valuable for the actors, do not need to be critical for this logic continues. The
17
difference between a cultural understand of clientelism and a material based approach is not whether
resources matter or not, but rather how they matter. Material based approaches defend a causal
relationship between poverty and clientelism. Clients only support the machine because the goods
exchanged are critical for them. As Stokes et al. put it: “the urgency of need might well lead the poor voter
to vote for the machine” (Stokes et al. 2013, 185). A cultural approach, instead, does not presupposes a
causal relationship between the criticalness of the good for clients and their support for the machine. This
is the case because the logic underlying the exchange transcends a particular socioeconomic context.
Although the access of goods is a part of the clientelistic exchange, the criticalness of the good for clients
is not what counts most for the survival of clientelistic practices. For a cultural based approach, clients
support the machine not because they need the good, but rather because this is how they understand
politics. Through this cultural point of view, clientelism is not, therefore, only poor people’s politics.
By emphasizing the symbolic dimensions attached to the clientelistic exchange, the cultural approach
deeply changes the way clientelism is perceived. The first difference is that clientelism is not necessarily
related to poverty. This allows scholars to investigate how the logic underlying the clientelistic style of
doing politics can also be appealing to better-off voters. Through a normative point of view, a cultural
perspective helps to diminish the stigma surrounding poor voters’ way to do politics and questions the
widespread commonsense that “poor people sell their vote for a bag of cement”.
The second difference is that the contingency aspect of the exchange is not taken as a constitutive
attribute of clientelism, as the economic approach defends. By eliminating contingency as a constitutive
attribute to clientelism, there is a “stretching” on the empirical coverage of the term (Sartori 1970). The
theoretical reason behind this “stretching” is that, for a cultural approach, the primary function of
clientelistic practices are not really to buy voters but rather to communicate with voters’ perception of
politics. Clients engage in clientelistic exchanges because this is what makes sense for them and not
necessarily because they fear being punished. Therefore, all the elements that come with the rationality
18
assumptions of the economic approach, such as contingency, monitoring and punishment, become
unnecessary within a cultural analysis of clientelism.
Besides, this broader conceptualization of clientelism is congruent with the empirical realities of the
machine politics analyzed here. In the cases analyzed here patrons distributed goods mainly without
contingency; what makes this theoretical conceptualization of clientelism more realist (Goertz 2006,
19;23). According to Hicken, to judge whether there is contingency, one needs to look if goods are
available to all comers, if voters accept goods from more than one patron and if resources are devoted to
monitor and enforce compliance (Hicken 2011, 296). At Sertão of Bahia, for example, politicians were the
least concerned with monitoring voters’ behavior. Besides, some voters would brag about the fact that
they received grants from competing politicians. At Rio de Janeiro, the alderman Marta serves mainly
voters from her area, but she would also do some “favors” for the friends of other competing politicians
(Kuschnir 2000b, 99). Definition of concepts are not right or wrong, but understanding clientelism without
contingency as a defining attribute is congruent with a cultural theoretical approach. It is also a more
realist approach towards the empirical evidences of contemporary political machines in which not only
voters are less dependent of patrons but also where it is hard to monitor political behavior.
The clientelistic logic in practice
In the previous section, I argued that clientelism endures throughout significant social changes because
the symbolic meaning attached to clientelistic’ exchanges, that I call a clientelistic logic, is relatively
autonomous from material determinants. In this section, I show how this logic is embedded in clientelistic
practices from different examples of ethnographic accounts from urban machines. Since within a cultural
approach clientelistic exchanges are not really buying votes, in this section, I show how these different
practices are rather fulfilling another function. By engaging in clientelistic practices, politicians are
communicating with the clientelistic logic of politics.
19
As Wedeen argues, symbolic meanings are not into the heads of informants4 but are rather observable
ways in which people use words and act in the world in ways that foster intelligibility (Wedeen 2002, 721).
The existence of these meanings do not presuppose that they are highly integrated or coherent, but rather
that there is some sense that they are shared, that is, that these signs and practices are recognized not
only by one person but by other groups of people as well (Wedeen 2002, 722; W. H. J. Sewell 1999, 50).
It is, thus, through people’s words and practices that I will demonstrate that these practices are a form of
actors to communicate with a shared logic of politics, the clientelistic logic.
Before presenting examples of practices that communicate with the clientelistic logic, it is necessary first
to specify the constitutive elements of this logic. Two elements are constitutive of this particular notion
and practice of politics. The first element is the idea of gaining access to resources, which can be material
grants, the solution of personal problems or even the allocation of public services in a particular
community. The second element is the notion that the brokerage of a politician is a way to gain access to
these resources. In its extreme, the perception of politicians as brokers entails the idea that politicians
occupies a unique position that gives them access to resources and solutions that are out of reach of those
who do not occupy the same position.
For voters who perceive politics through the logic of clientelism politics are about solving their personal
problems, are about gaining access to resources. The following practices and narratives of voters and
politicians of the slums of Buenos Aires, of Rio de Janeiro and at Sertão of Bahia become intelligible when
perceived through the point of view of voters who perceive politics as a way to solve problems. As one
4
Besides, it is important to emphasize that the word clientelism is not necessarily the way in which natives
denominate these sorts of political practices. Kuschnir observed that the most common denomination used by Rio
de Janeiro’s aldermen was ‘assistance’ (Kuschnir 2000a, 49), which has a negative connotation. ‘Community work
instead was used with a more positive connotation (Kuschnir 2000b, 108; Kuschnir 2000a, 36). At Sertão of Bahia,
the word ‘assistance’ was also used by politicians as well as the expression, literally translated, ‘ask-ask’, which refer
to the overwhelming felling politicians felt by the constant demands of voters. In the slums of Buenos Aires, Auyero,
noticed how the brokers referred to their activities as social work because they wanted to distinguish what they did
from politics (Auyero 2000, 131).
20
alderman from Rio de Janeiro told Kushnir: “our political culture entails that voters see parliamentarians
as someone who, besides taking care of the public good, should deals with their personal problem”
(Kuschnir 2000a, 35). Kuschnir notes that even leftist politicians hold a similar opinion regarding how
voters perceived politics. These leftist politicians criticized voters for their reconciled behavior as they
expected someone else would solve their problems (Kuschnir 2000a, 36). According to Kuschnir, some of
the Rio de Janeiro’s aldermen felt swamped by the demands of ‘insatiable’ voters. Voters looked for
politicians asking for the solution of all sorts of problems, from the aid to construct a wall to an advice of
where to look for a penis enlargement procedure (Kuschnir 2000a, 37; 46). At Sertão of Bahia, leftist and
clientelistic politicians would complain about the habit of voters always asking something for them.
Sometimes voters would not have a personal problem to be solved, but they would ask for the solution
of a friends’ problem if they encounter a politician, even if they did not knew exactly what the friends’
problem was about. The important was to present a demand for the politician, as he was the everyday
problem solver. The narrative of one voter at the slum of Buenos Aires presented by Auyero also describes
how voters perceived politics as a source of help to deal with everyday problems:
Politics helps a lot. … I improve my home through politics. I constructed all the pipelines and the
sewage system for my home through politics. … The paving was done through politics; it was done
by Rolo [the mayor]. The water was installed by Pedro [a broker]. The municipality helps a lot.
Politics helps a lot. When we need them to get drinkable water, they are here. (Auyero 2000, 171).
For the politicians and brokers who see politics through the clientelistic logic, their role is to help voters
solve their problems. These politicians often see themselves as a benefactor of those in need (Kuschnir
2000a, 39). As Kuschnir puts it, for machine politicians the obligation to attend voters’ demand is part of
politics (Kuschnir 2000b, 136). The alderman Marta, for example, criticized those politicians she referred
as ideological because she could not understand why they could not help those who helped them, that is,
why they could not help voters, in her words:
21
Those ideological, for example, for me they are influenced by others. They do not do what they
want to do. For example, the alderman from the Workers’ Party really wanted to give a job for
her brother, but she couldn’t. Then, she came to me and asked me to employ her brother. The
other alderman of the Workers’ Party constantly asks me for placements in public schools. The
other alderman of the PDT as well. So, these ideological need to assist the community, they have
to help the friends! Those are the people who helped them. But their party does not allow them
to do that. So, they come and ask other politicians to do so. You have no idea how much
placements in public schools I needed to find this year! But I told them: “I am not working for
you.” (my translation from Portuguese extracted from Kuschnir 2000b, p. 99)
Kuschnir also refers to another interesting example that highlights how clientelistic politicians perceive
their role as problem solvers as a duty that comes with their status as a politician. During the 1990’s one
federal deputy in Brazil lost office after being convicted for accepting money to switch to another party.
The deputy openly expressed his perplexity towards his conviction, as he “did not have enough resources
to handle all the social duties that come from his mandate. When the voters come asking for assistance,
a wheel chair and so on, he had to have the money to solve these demands” (Kuschnir 2000b, 137).
According to the views of clientelistic politicians, it is the politicians’ responsibility to solve voters’
demand, even if this means using their own private resources to do so (Kuschnir 2000a, 37; Kuschnir
2000b, 112). In the view of the broker Andrea in the slum of Buenos Aires, politics is about solving these
small problems of voters and not about looking for “grand solutions”, when she was confronted with the
suggestion of an NGO to improve the conditions of the slum, she reacted:
They wanted to improve conditions… but to do that they want to mobilize a lot of people. … That’s
not the way I do things. … I solve better small problems, like the funeral, instead of mobilizing a
lot of people and creating false expectations. … I prefer to do smaller works, like being able to
hand out medicine in the middle of the night. (extracted from Auyero 2000, p. 103)
22
Another constitutive element of the clientelistic logic is the idea that the brokerage of politicians is
essential for voters to gain access to resources. Of course, in contemporary societies, politicians are hardly
the only problem-solving network. In the previous sections, I discussed how politicians have lost
considerable power because they do not monopolize critical goods anymore, they compete with the
state/bureaucracy (Guterbock 1980, 91) or with charity organizations, such as the Caritas of the Catholic
Church (Auyero 2000, 87). Despite the existence of these competing problem-solver sources, clientelistic
politicians strive to pass the idea for voters need their brokerage. The alderman Marta, for example,
implemented a very systematic practice to teach voters that the only way in which state’s resources would
flow to the community was through her intermediation. Through her personal ties with the personal of
city agencies, she negotiated privately the intervention of a city agency to solve a specific problem in her
“area”. Once a solution was reached, she scheduled a meeting with the agency and the dwellers. Even
though the solution of the problem was already reached, with these public meetings, in Marta own words,
“the dwellers learn to value” (Marta’s intervention in city agencies) and start to understand “how things
work” (Kuschnir 2000a, 123). Paraphrasing one of Marta’s assistants, for clientelistic politicians: without
a politicians that fights for the state to intervene in a certain community, dwellers might have to wait
years to see the conclusion of public works (Kuschnir 2000b, 137–138). Only the politicians can solve these
problems, only they have the channels to influence the flow of resources.
For Marta, she can solve people’s problem because she is a politician who is in office (Kuschnir 2000b, 88).
Marta attributes her ability to build ties within city agencies, which are essential for her to solve the
problems of her constituencies, to her condition as a politician in office. One cannot buy these ties; they
can only be achieved through the politics of alliance with those who hold executive offices (Kuschnir
2000b, 88). To make these alliances with the executive, it is necessary first to hold a legislative office.
Although clientelistic politicians might use private resources, their ability to intervene in the allocation of
23
public resources is what makes them unique in the eyes of voters5. Clients are aware of this fact and
therefore evaluate brokers’ credibility to deliver goods and services by examining brokers’ relations with
the central government. Gay’s study of two slums in Rio de Janeiro carefully describes how in a context of
competing brokers, clients are conscious about the status of each one of them within the state and local
executive powers. The author reports that the broker of one favela, Vila Brasil, had no problem in breaking
his long-term relationship with a patron once his patron’s party lost control of both state and municipal
governments in Rio de Janeiro. Vila Brasil’s broker was aware that this electoral loss of his broker’s party
would significantly undercut his old patron’s access to public resources. He did not want to damage his
community access to benefits by being associated with a patron that was out of the governing alliance in
the city. For voters and brokers who understand politics through a clientelistic logic, therefore, there is
something unique about politicians in power. Only they have the ability to solve problems, only they can
intervene to allocate state resources in favor of their constituencies.
It is important to highlight, as already stated before, the existence of a clientelistic logic does not assumes
that all members of a community equally share this logic. As Sewell puts it, cultures are contested and
people occupying different positions in a social order might hold different social beliefs (W. H. J. Sewell
1999, 54). In the ethnographic accounts of Auyero (2000), Kuschnir (2000), Guterbock (1980) and on my
own field work, the clientelistic logic was far from being uncontested. Not all voters perceived politics as
a way to gain access to resources and not all politicians saw themselves as problem solver of voters. There
are, for example, those groups of individuals who openly contest the clientelistic logic, such as leftist social
movements within the community. Social movements tend to emphasize the role of citizens’ collective
actions for the implementation of social rights instead of crediting politicians as the ones responsible for
5
Clientelism, therefore, needs some level of a politicized economic governance, borrowing the term from Kitschelt
and Wilkinson. In a politicized economic governance, politicians have some level of discretion to target public
resources when the rules of authoritative allocation of costs and benefits are not transparent or public (Chandra
2007, 36; Stokes et al. 2013, 10–11).
24
the improvements in a community (Auyero 2000, 170). Within those who openly oppose and contest the
clientelistic logic there are the ‘ideological politicians’ (Kuschnir 2000a, 43) or the ‘Independents’
(Guterbock 1980, 26–27) but whose constituency is normally not concentrated in areas where clientelistic
politicians are successful. Finally, that are those groups of individuals who do not hold favorable views
from current powerful brokers but that do not contest the way brokers practice politics (Auyero 2000,
175). Auyero, for example, noticed that countervoices are usually located outside the inner circle of a
broker (Auyero 2000, 175). At Sertão of Bahia, I noticed the same finding, many voters criticized machine
politicians but not the clientelistic way of doing politics. Many of those critical voices came from voters
who used to be loyal to former clientelistic politicians who lost power. The presence of these voices that
explicitly confronts the clientelistic logic does not deny the fact this logic is widely shared among members
of a community. On the opposite, the very fact that this logic is contested attests not only its existence
but also that it is recognized and opposed by members of different groups.
The various meanings of clientelistic practices
Once the symbolic meanings attached to the clientelistic exchange are emphasized, clientelistic practices
are understood not as a way to buy votes but rather as a way to communicate with voters’ perception of
politics. In the last section, I showed how various practices of different political machines become
intelligible in reference to a clientelistic logic of understanding politics. At this section, I focus rather on
the various meanings patron-clients exchanges can produce. These meanings are only intelligible in
reference to a clientelistic understanding of politics. This notion of culture as a semiotic practice entails
that meanings generate actions into the world and that actions also produce meanings (Wedeen 2002,
722; W. H. J. Sewell 1999, 51). By putting cultural codes into practice actors can elaborate, modify and
adapt theses codes to novel circumstances producing, likewise, new meanings (W. H. J. Sewell 1999, 51).
In this section, I attempt to show new meanings that are congruent but not reduced to the clientelistic
logic are enacted by patron-clients exchanges.
25
The clientelistic logic of doing politics is practice in tandem with other widely shared cultural values. When
this is the case, the clientelistic exchange might also be a way for politicians to build a record as defenders
of these cultural attachments. Since the intermediation of resources by the politicians is an integral part
of the clientelistic logic, politicians can also use the exchanges as a form to display their power, that is, as
a way to signal to voters that they have the resources and channels that top clientelistic politicians should
have to solve people’s problem. The providence of services for voters can also serve as a way for voters
to perform their political identity linked to a clientelistic logic of doing politics.
As discussed before, Guterbock find plenty of evidences against a materialistic view of the Chicago
machine. The kind of goods distributed by machine politicians of the Regular Democratic ward
organization had little value as a proper material inducement. Users of party services were not the ones
who traditionally support the Democratic voters. Also, the users were certainly not the poor voters who
material-based approaches would predict to be the ones target by the machine. Nonetheless, the
Chicago’s Regular Democratic organization devoted a significant amount of time and resources to deliver
services to individual voters. Paraphrasing the words of a party leader, the party is there every day of the
year to help people, to work hard to take care of people’s problem, they are the party that help voters
every day (Guterbock 1980, 62).
Why then the Regular Democratic Organization devoted substantial resources in delivering services with
little value for middle-class voters? Guterbock claims that the machine continues to offer these party
services because these services functions a way of politicians to build a record as advocates of the
community (Guterbock 1980, 189). According to Guterbock, localist sentiments are widely shared among
voters in the ward he studied. Localist individuals have not only an economic investment in the community
– through property ownership – but also a moral attachment to the community, as they may define
themselves in reference to their neighborhoods (Guterbock 1980, 119–120). In this context of a shared
attachment to localistic values, community leaders and local notables care about improving the
26
community and they appreciate, therefore, the quality of local services (Guterbock 1980, 189). In this
sense, the continuous provision of party services at the ward level is a way of machine politicians to build
a record as advocates of the community. By solving the problems of voters within local boundaries, by
providing local services and by continuously attending voters who come seeking help at a local level,
machine politicians are performing the role that is expected to be practiced by those who care about the
community.
Auyero, for example, claims that the public presentation of brokers, that includes an exaggerate modesty,
a passion for the poor, a natural vocation to social work, an identification with the people and selfsacrificing life of serving the people, can only be understood in relation to a Peronist identity. In a context
in which Peronism is still the strongest electoral force of the country, Auyero argues that brokers practices
are a form a restoring a Peronist cultural tradition (Auyero 2000, 123). The clientelistic exchange, the
distribution of goods by brokers is, therefore, not simply an exchange but a performance of the Peronist
cultural tradition. The clientelistic exchange is one of the elements of the repertoire that the members of
the community recognize as being part of Peronist way to do things. The exaggerate modesty of brokers
as well as the distribution of goods are part of a repertoire of practices and discourses that exist since the
time of Eva Perón. In that sense, broker’s favors are not a bribe but “a gift bestowed because of a great
love for the people, because of one’s duty as a good referente, because it is what Evita would have done,
because it this what a good Peronist does” (Auyero 2000, 123). Therefore, in the same way that the blond
fake hair of some women brokers forged Eva Perón’s image and served as a way of restoring the Peronist
identity, the distribution of goods and the availability of brokers to solve clients’ problems is one of the
practices that brokers engage as a way to perform this widely shared Peronist identity.
For voters the possibility of solving problems through the brokerage of politicians is an opportunity of
individuals to put into practice their own understanding of politics. According to Guterbock, by demanding
party’s services in Chicago, individuals are expressing their identity as a resident with a sense of
27
responsibility to his community (Guterbock 1980, 210). By being in contact with the localized party service
apparatus, the sense of responsibility that dwellers with strong community attachment have is validated
(Guterbock 1980, 211). Marleide, one of the dwellers of the public housing residence I was living, was one
among many other individuals at Sertão of Bahia who would tell me that they were passionate about
politics. Even though they were not politicians or local community leaders. For Marleide to do politics was
to help her friends and relatives solve their problems. She was relatively well connected with local
politicians. It was through these ties that she tried to solve not only her own problems, such as having a
job, but also her friends and relatives’ problems. The mother in law of her cousin wanted to build a wall
around her house because she was afraid of the growing violence in her neighborhood after the shooting
in public housing residence she lived. Marleide took this as her problem and asked for the politicians she
knew a help to buy the construction materials to build the wall. In another example, an unemployed friend
of Marleide needed to find a way to transport the fridge someone gave her. Marleide was the one who
arranged a truck with a politician do the transportation of the fridge. By solving these problems of her
friends and relatives through her connections with local politicians, Marleide was performing the way she
knew and loved to do politics. She was performing her identity as a politician, as she would often tell me
that she did politics. Marleide did not needed to be an alderman or a mayor to be a politician, by solving
other people’s problem through her connections with politicians she was already doing politics and being
a politician.
By distributing goods and by solving individuals’ problems, clientelist politicians are also showing voters
that they have the capacity of maintaining their status as a problem solver. A form of display of power in
which politicians demonstrate they have resources and channels that are the elements that make them
unique for voters. Kuschnir observes that when Marta was attending voters, there was many ways in
which Marta’s channels would appear. Sometimes Marta would try to solve a certain demand by calling
the contact she had in a certain government agency while she was attending a voter (Kuschnir 2000b,
28
129). Though this was a risky strategy, since her demand could be denied and embarrass her, this was also
a way to reinforce in front of the voter her image as someone who is well connected within government
agencies (Kuschnir 2000b, 129). The maintenance of her status as someone who can solve problems
depends on her showing that she could continuous supply of these favors. By solving this problems and
displaying the resources and channels she as a politicians had, Marta was confirming for voters her
identity as someone who has the capacity to solve problems.
Marta was a politician who built her career “attending” voters. At Sertão of Bahia, one of the politicians I
followed during the elections, who I will call Ramiro, practiced the same style of politics as Marta, but in
a less professionalized way. Ramiro was new in politics but as a rich self-made man he had built over the
years an image as a person who always give a hand for those in need, from providing his truck to move
household of poor people to forgiving a debt from customers of his business. In order to gain a seat in the
state legislature, however, Ramiro’s reputation as someone who always give a hand needed to expand
beyond his own hometown.
In the weekend that preceded the Election-Day, Ramiro was visiting several rural communities and
evangelical churches in one of the most populated cities of Bahia with the guidance of the staff of a local
alderman. In a conversation during a break, the chief of staff of this local alderman expressed his concern
about how Ramiro would lead this last week of campaign. He told Ramiro that if he wanted to win, it was
essential that he had enough resources to spend during this last week. Ramiro needed to attend voters’
demand in this last week of campaign. The lack of resources to do so in this last week, he said, could be
fatal for Ramiro’s chance of winning. Another allied politicians of Ramiro shared the same opinion of the
chief of staff, he told me: “You should not expect that the people you helped will vote for you, because
they vote for the one who gave the money last. But, if you don’t give the money, even if it is just fifty
cents, you are the worst person in the world. The difference between being the best and the worst person
in the world is only fifty cents.”
29
Even though Ramiro could not fulfill all the demands he received, sometimes simply because he did not
have enough staff to handle the demands, he had relatively enough resources to deliver favors for voters.
Besides his own private resources, he also had the financial support from the most powerful businessman
of his city and access to the local government machine. He would often complain to me about how much
of his own money he had to spend attending the constant petty demands of voters. He once told me that
for each day of canvassing he spends at least a thousand reais: “You know, you enter in a bar and you
meet some friends, then you have to pay the bill for everybody, it does not matter if it was two boxes of
beer or ten. For this campaign, the mayor promised to give the infrastructure, but I knew I would have to
afford for this everyday expenses. In my last campaign, I had to sell all my cattle of 200 cows.”
The situation was very different for the other candidate I also followed. Amélia, how I will call her, had a
long history in politics but with a very different profile from Ramiro. While they were both candidates
from the Workers’ Party, only Amélia was considered a true representative of the party by party activists
because of her long-term involvement with the landless social movements of the region. Amélia was part
of the foundation of the Workers’ Party in the region during the 1980’s while Ramiro was a recent
affiliated. While Ramiro was still learning to deal with a party with strong internal organization and
grassroots linkages, Amélia was an icon for the grassroots movements. Amélia was not rich. Although she
had some financial support from local small business, her campaign was constantly running out of money.
Amélia and Ramiro were direct competitors as both expected to have votes in the rural areas of the Sertão
of Bahia. When the ballots were open, Ramiro was elected. Amélia not only was not elected but also
received a disappointing smaller number of votes than her previous campaigns. For one of the
coordinators of Amélia’s campaign, there was no doubt that Ramiro won because he had money to pour
in the campaign while Amélia had not. He confessed to me in a disappointed tone after the election:
30
“While looking for support for Amélia, I talked with various leaderships who say in front of the
candidate that they would support her, but later they would call you and say that it would cost
something; this has happened a lot to me. When I did the campaign for another candidate in 2002,
people used to say that you need half a million to make a state deputy, now it is at least 2 million,
so where will we stop? Unfortunately, this is the only way if you want to keep some political space,
but the question is whether this is worth. I do not know if it is worth anymore. People would come
to me and say ‘Amélia is the best candidate but her campaign does not pour money, how will she
win if she does not have money?’. Ramiro was elected because of that, the businessmen
supporting him want him to win so they gave him a lot of money to spend during the campaign”.
The urge to throw money in the last days of the campaign, the fear of voters’ judgement if the politicians
denies a favor, the obligation Ramiro felt of paying everything for voters during the campaign indicates
that politicians feared appearing ‘poor’ in the minds of the voters as Amélia did for the voter her
coordinator mentioned in his comment. Money was distributed for brokers without any guarantee that
they would indeed deliver what they promised. When the ballots were open, both received less votes
than what the most pessimistic calculations predicted according to the promises of brokers. The resistance
of a voter to support Amélia even if she was the best candidate because her campaign did not pour money
makes the concern of Ramiro’s allies urging him to throw out money into voters understandable. Ramiro
needed to signal to voters that he had enough resources to attend voters’ demand, if not he would appear
in the eyes of voters as a candidate with no real chances of winning as Amélia appeared. A candidate that
has no chances of winning will not be able to attend voters’ demand over the long run without the
channels and resources a politician with an office has. As Amélia told one voter with all sincerity: “I cannot
help you now with your health needs because I do not have an office, but if I win, you will have a deputy
from your hometown that you can knock on the door to help you, isn’t that good?”.
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The uncontrolled distribution of money for brokers and voters during the campaign was one of the ways
candidates had to signal that they had power, that they were financially supported by powerful allies, that
they were, consequently, players with real chances of winning the game. The concern whether these
voters being “bought” would deliver their support was simply not an issue, the real concern of both Amélia
and Ramiro in these last days of campaign was if they would be able to deliver what they promised for
voters and allied brokers. Although practically almost all candidates at Sertão of Bahia, even the more
ideological ones, did practiced some sort of vote buying, some, as Ramiro, were more successful than
others in signaling their power. Because, as one activist of the Workers’ Party confessed to me with
desperation as she felt uncertain whether the practice of vote buying by Workers’ Party members was the
right way to go, “there is always someone with more money than you”.
Beyond poverty
The cases of Sertão of Bahia, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro show how clientelistic practices persists despite
socioeconomic changes that significantly reduced both the dependency of clients on patrons and the
power of patrons to hold voters accountable for their political behavior. The changing environment within
which machines operate forced patrons to adapt to a more constricting reality. Those clientelistic
politicians who learned to operate with less critical resources and who increased their political appeal
beyond poor voters helped to make political machines survives a tougher environment. I argued that the
main reason why machines survives is that the symbolic meanings attached to clientelistic practices, which
I call the clientelistic logic, persists. A perception in which politics are about gaining access to personal
benefits through the brokerage of politicians still resonates with voters and politicians. The survival of this
cultural dimension of clientelism is, therefore, the main reason why clientelistic practices persist despite
the fact that the material inducements inherent to these sort of exchanges become less important.
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Although instrumentalist elements are intrinsic to clientelistic practices, the symbolic meanings
encompassing these exchanges, the clientelistic logic, also matters. If the material determinants are not
the main driven force behind clients adherence to clientelistic exchanges, then clientelism can also be
appealing to better-off voters making this phenomena not only poor people’s politics. By highlighting the
cultural dimension of clientelistic exchanges, I showed that, more than “buying votes”, practices attached
to clientelism are communicating with voters’ understanding of politics. Besides, I also showed how
clientelistic practices could also entail new meanings that goes beyond the clientelistic logic and that are
congruent with this logic.
A cultural analysis means not only a different causal approach towards clientelism, one that emphasizes
meaning-making over material inducements, but also a different conceptualization of clientelism. The
clientelistic logic encompass broader empirical cases than the narrower definition of the economic
approach. Contingency, the defining attribute of clientelism for the economic approach, becomes
unimportant if clientelistic practices are perceived not as a way to buy votes but as meaning making.
Although some might argue that this conceptual stretching might lead to a conceptual blur, I argue that it
can also enhance the comparison with other practices normally not related to clientelism, such as lobbing.
For Clawson et al, lobbing is nothing more than money contributions made by business in expectation
that this will grant them access to congressman and that this access will be a channel to influence policy
in favorable terms (Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller 1998). Instead of giving money, clients expect that
their votes will grant them access to politicians and it is through this access that they expect to solve their
problems and demands, just as businessman expect. At Sertão of Bahia, the similarity between clients and
business was evident. Both were courting politicians in the everyday life; granted that local businessman
were assured a much more respectful and longer access.
The comparison with other phenomena is important because it highlights how these practices share a
similar logic that undermine democracy. The venality of the clientelistic logic lies on the perception that
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politicians’ role is to handle particularistic interests instead of representing collective interests. If
politicians are perceived as a channel to solve personal problems, once they fulfill their role as problem
solvers, voters might not care to hold them accountable for the decisions they take that affects collective
interests. The clientelistic logic also entails the idea that the brokerage of politicians is necessary for
gaining access to rights. This undermines the role of individuals as citizens capable of affecting the political
decision-making process. Instead of focusing whether voters are accountable to their behavior, by paying
attention to the clientelistic logic, future research can call the attention to the fact that the venality of this
practice is not confined to poor people’s politics or to developing countries. The emphasis on the logic of
clientelism allow researchers to see how clientelism is part of a group of practices and ways to perceive
politics that is actually widespread among individuals with various economic power and among rich and
poor countries.
Finally, a cultural understanding of clientelism entails that the demise of these practices is more
complicated than improving the living standard of voters. The real threat to clientelism, then, necessary
comes with the promotion of different cultural parameters of understanding politics. This can sound like
a pessimistic assessment since freeing voters of dependency ties from patrons might not be enough to
end clientelistic practices, as it was the case at Sertão of Bahia. However, this also means that other
political cultures can be enhanced without having to wait for the economic development of a society. This
is actually is good news since relative levels of economic development tend to persist over time (Mahoney
2010). The successful transition of the slum of Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro from a slum controlled by
clientelistic politicians to one with strong independent grassroots organizations is a good example that
this is possible. After having successfully avoided their removal through the collective organization of
dwellers without the need of a politician’s brokerage, slums dwellers broke with the long-term influence
patronage politicians had over Vidigal (Gay 1994). The case of Vidigal shows that, much more than
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improving voters’ living standards, it is also necessary to promote alternatives way to practice and
understand politics.
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