The Puzzle of Clientelism : Political Discretion and Elections Around the World

This Element presents newly-collected cross-national data on reelection rates of lower house national legislators from almost 100 democracies around the world.

Reelection rates are low/high in countries where clientelism and vote buying are high/low.

Drawing on theory developed to study lobbying, the authors explain why politicians continue clientelist activities although they do not secure reelection.

The Element also provides a thorough review of the last decade of literature on clientelism, which the authors define as discretionary resource distribution by political actors.

The combination of novel empirical data and theoretically-grounded analysis provides a radically new perspective on clientelism.

Finally, the Element suggests that clientelism evolves with economic development, assuming new forms in highly developed democracies but never entirely disappearing.