Holzner 2006

“Clientelism and Democracy in Mexico:  The Role of Strong and Weak Networks”, Claudio A Holzner  pp 77-94

in Johnston, Hank, and Paul Almeida, eds. 2006. Latin American social movements: globalization, democratization, and transnational networks. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield.

• Introduction
• clientelism has not gone away in Mexico, and may be strengthening in some areas (Fox 1994, Hellman 1994, Holzner 2002)
• Study of rival organizations in a squatter settlement in Oaxaca (78)
• PAN wrested control of municipality away from PRI
• results:
• some squatters deserted the PRI
• some squatters remained loyal to the PRI
• Argument: strength of ties between clients and patron has an important effect on whether clientelism continues in democratic context
• The Puzzle: Clientelism and Democracy
• in 1980s organizations in civil society began to become more assertive to the PRI (79)
• At the grassroots level, thousands of less formal organizations have sprung up to fill the vacuum left by the retreating Mexican state
• Voting results show that PRI still has the poor vote outside of DF and Guadalajara
• important key to Mexican context:  in the past, PRI had monopolistic control over organizational life before democracy and during the gradual transition (80)
• my take: historians may quibble about strength, dominance of the state, but at least among the poor it is likely true that someone/group controlled them, even if that person/group wasn’t a pure priista
• old theories
• clientelist practices are result of irrationality conditioned by hegemonic ideologies forced on the people by ____ (the state, the leader, etc) (Stokes 1995) --> not wrong, but over generalizes, gets a bit normative re: irrationality (81)
• Strong and weak ties to organizations create opportunities and constraints (Granovetter 1973)
• variations of A) ability of leaders to monitor behavior of clients and B) control of information to clients defines the strength/weakness of ties
• strong ties: dense networks with little outside-network social interaction
• can be used to get members involved in politics
• can also be used to stifle members participation in politics
• weak ties: organizations try to make contact with other organizations
• information cannot be controlled by leaders
• filtering information is a strong control over behavior because it doesn't demand the use of outright coercion (82)
• A Tale of Two Networks
• Two groups in Solidaridad, a squatter settlement in city of Oaxaca, capital of Oaxaca (83)
• the random process of settlement of this community created a heterogeneous community, one where identity formation (despite similar problems facing them) was still incomplete (84)
• had tequios, indigenous tradition of communal work to improve community (84-85)
• by keeping track of residents participation in tequios and other community events the community as a whole was able to enforce property rights and settle disputes among neighbors (85)
• but the leader of this community organization became aligned with the PRI, so political participation lost its vitality, and by 1995 was largely symoblic
• then in 1995 PAN won the local elections
• told neighborhoods to adopt a new organizational framework, COMVIVE, which would shift leadership away from the PRI dominated one (not yet PAN dominated, though they likely would have wanted to dominate it) (86)
• new leaders in Solidaridad cut off ties with PRI
• about 1/3 of the residents stayed in the PRI network, stopped participating in COMVIVE, believing that RI was still the best way to access government resources
• neighborhood split, practically no communication across networks
• PRI affiliated people just stopped being involve in larger community, stopped doing tequios, etc.
• “In such a context of declining benefits and increasing political competition, monitoring compliance, and controlling information flows becomes critical to the survival of clientelist organizations” (87)
• Monitoring
• even though it’s objectively impossible for the PRI to know how people vote, they did a few tricks where they collected identification information to make it seem like they could find out/figure out how you voted (88-89)
• Information Constraints
• PRI’s historical model was to create dense ties among small groups, resulting in little cross-group interaction even between PRI groups (89)
• PRI used to control the TV too (used to? or still does...)
• also, false promises of the past make most neighborhood groups skeptical...promises have to be proven (90)
• After two years of the COMVIVE program, only Solidaridad had signed up for the new program
• AND those who stuck with the PRI in Solidaridad were fed false information, to discredit municipality's (PAN) programs (91)
• PRI members are reluctant to leave the PRI, because they don’t want to lose access to resources and ar uncertain about the PAN’s ability to deliver on its promises, and the PRI is feeding these groups misinformation, making them even less likely to ‘leave the fold’ as it were (92)
• Conclusion
• the transformative capacity of grassroots organizations hinges on their ability to create extensive weak ties that bridge strong clientelistic networks, allowing resources and information to move more freely (92)
• these broader networks allow poor to broaden their information sources
• the more sporadic government patronage becomes, the more the poor will cling to clientelist networks hoping to be rewarded later