Szwarcberg 2013

Mariela Szwarcberg. "The Microfoundations of Political Clientelism: Lessons from the Argentine Case." Latin American Research Review 48.2 (2013): 32-54.

• Introduction
• while clientelism is often taken as a given, party operatives in Argentina and elsewhere can prefer not to distribute goods in exchange of electoral support (33)
• argument:  a party operative's capacity to turn to clientelistic strategies of mobilization is a necessary but insufficient condition to explain the use of clientelism...party operatives have to prefer to build clientelistic linkages with voters
• study of municipal candidates in Argentina
• Mobilizing Voters: Lit review
• while the poor are targets of clientelistic strategies, scholars have convincingly shown that the poor are strategic and sophisticated in making political decisions
• to explain candidates' strategic choices to turn out voters, I distinguish between a candidates CAPACITY and PREFERENCE to use clientelism (34)
• political parties contribute to shaping politicians' strategies by providing (or not providing) incentives to use clientelism to turn out voters (35)
• Choosing Strategies of Political Mobilization
• Assumption: candidates interested in a political career have to demonstrate their ability to get votes for the party
• Table 1: (36)

Candidate has Capacity to use Clientelism	Candidate Prefers to use Clientelism
	Yes	No
Yes	Pragmatist	Idealist
No	Resentful	Utopist

•   Without observing explicit choice, can't tell the difference between resentful and utopist
• Data
• ballot positions reflect the value of each candidate to the party (39)
• data suggests the longer a candidate uses clientelism to build a constituency the more likely they will have a higher ballot position
• Candidates Capacity
• Incumbent candidates are more likely to have access to material goods (39)
• access to resources is also conditioned by level of government
• candidate who has party members in national and/or regional office has more resources than one who is just a local incumbent (40)
• also, to effectively use clientelism a candidate need to have access to resources AND a network of party activists to spread resources around
• in Argentina this means only the PJ and Radical party (my take: though maybe not the Radicals anymore?) (41)
• given the data, cast majority of the sample is PJ activists
• Some new parties do have minimal clientelist networks if candidates brought activists and networks with them from a previous party (PJ or UCR) (42)
• Candidate's Preferences
• Candidates that engage in "solving voter problems" will obtain electoral support and will also monitor political participation (43)
• usually by taking attendance at political rallies
• this works because voting is mandatory, but finding who voted what is still impossible
• for this paper, a candidate who takes attendance is clientelistic
• Explaining variation in candidate preferences
• interesting thing is that idealists are almost equal in number to the pragmatists (44)
• now focus on PJ, since they are the ones with the most resources
• in José C Paz neighborhood, unemployment rate is 80%ish (45)
• easy to mobilize voters by distributing goods
• intraparty competition induces candidates to use clientelism (46)
• if one doesn't do it, another will
• if candidate doesn't go clientelistic, sends signal to party that he's not willing to do "whatever it takes" to win
• idealist candidates essentially know they are committing political suicide (47)
• candidates realize that the best way to mobilize voters is to help and then coerce them
• but if this doesn't happen, party "doesn't forgive you" (48)
• its bad, but "these are the rules of the game"
• in Río Cuarto, another municipality, two Radical candidates faced off
• one wanted to create electoral alliance with another party
• the other wanted to keep "purity" of Radical ideology
• electoral coalition won because able to attract more voters!
• Resentful candidates blame their electoral failure entirely on their incapacity to provide benefits (49)
• strong correlation between pragmatist candidates and PJ (49), fewer pragmatists in UCR (50)
• Conclusion
• THE PARTIES CREATE THE INCENTIVES THAT CAUSE MOST CANDIDATES TO TURN TO CLIENTELISM (51)
• But not all candidates prefer to use clientelism...parties could create ways to get these "cleaner" politicians to rise through the ranks