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 [email protected] 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 [Draft: Please do not cite without the author’s permission.] 1 Introduction Taking a cab in São Paulo can be a very instructive experience, especially when cab drivers discover that you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. 2 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 3 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 4 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 5 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 6 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. 7 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 8 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, 9 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 10 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. 11 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. 12 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, 13 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. 14 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?”. 31 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. 32 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 33 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). 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