23 research outputs found
Political Fixers and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in Gujarat, India: Lubricating a Patronage Democracy
Akses terhadap keadilan; perjuangan masyarakat miskin dan kurang beruntung untuk menuntut hak di Indonesia
xiii.; 324 hal.; ill.; 19 c
The Spatial Distribution of Riots: Patronage and the Instigation of Communal Violence in Gujarat, India
Summary Why does violence erupt in some areas and not in others? The Hindu-Muslim violence that engulfed Gujarat in 2002 did not spread uniformly throughout the state, as a sizable number of towns and villages remained unaffected by the killing, looting, and raping that took place. This article takes up the different levels of violence within one city as a clue to understand the local dynamics that lead to riots. This ethnographic study of events in a violent and a peaceful locality suggests that violence is more likely in neighborhoods where inhabitants gain access to state institutions through patronage networks that derive electoral gains from communal violence.ethnic violence patronage Hindu-nationalism civil society India Gujarat
Supplementary_Dataset – Supplemental material for The Political Economy of Clientelism: A Comparative Study of Indonesia’s Patronage Democracy
<p>Supplemental material, Supplementary_Dataset for The Political Economy of Clientelism: A Comparative Study of Indonesia’s Patronage Democracy by Ward Berenschot in Comparative Political Studies</p
Explaining regional variation in local governance: clientelism and state-dependency in Indonesia
What explains the varied quality of local governance? The worldwide trend to decentralize the responsibilities and budgets of governments has made this question particularly urgent, spurring research that emphasizes the importance of local leadership, civil society and democratic accountability. In this paper we provide an approach to study how informal dimensions of politics impact public service delivery. We seek to explain the varied quality of local governance across Indonesia by focusing on the way in which local economic conditions foster clientelistic practices. To this end we integrate ethnographic fieldwork, an expert survey as well as cross-district statistical regression analyses of local government performance. We argue that the degree of state dependency of local economies impacts the quality of local governance because politicians in state-dependent economies face less constraints when engaging in clientelistic practices. We test this argument through a two-step regression analysis for the period 1999–2013 in which we relate a measure of the quality of public service delivery to expert assessments of the character of local politics, controlling for the potential effects of various local socio-economic and government budget indicators. We find that observed patterns in the variation of the quality of local governance in Indonesia indeed correspond with both variation in perceived intensity of clientelistic practices, as well as the degree of state dependency of local economies. These results suggest that interventions to strengthen local governance need to be attuned to the character of local economies
How clientelism varies: comparing patronage democracies
Clientelistic vote mobilization is a prominent electoral strategy in many of the world’s
democracies and electoral authoritarian regimes. Yet the comparative study of this
practice, which involves exchanging personal favours for electoral support, remains
strikingly underdeveloped. This special issue makes the case that clientelistic politics
takes different forms in different countries, and that this variation matters for
understanding democracy, elections, and governance. By comparing clientelistic
vote mobilization in several countries – Mexico, Ghana, Sudan to Turkey, Indonesia,
the Philippines, Caribbean and Pacific Islands states, and Malaysia – we unpack the
concept of political clientelism and show that it is possible to identify different types
of patronage democracies. In this introductory essay, we develop a comparative
framework for this endeavour, showing that clientelism can be fruitfully compared
in terms of the character of the networks that facilitate clientelistic exchange, the
benefits that politicians offer in exchange for votes, and the degree to which
politicians, and especially parties, control the distribution of state resources. These
comparisons lead to the identification of different types of patronage democracies,
notably community-centred and party-centred varieties. Building on this framework,
this special issue shows that the comparative study of clientelistic politics offers
analytical promise for scholars of democracy and democratization.This work was supported by Australian Research Council [FT120100742]; Nederlandse Organisatie
voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [451-12-013
Parties as pay-off seekers: Pre-electoral coalitions in a patronage democracy
The study of party coalitions largely focuses on national elections in western democracies. How are coalitions formed in political systems in which competition occurs on a clientelistic rather than programmatic foundation? To examine coalition formation outside the context of western party systems, we study pre-electoral coalitions formed in subnational executive government elections in Indonesia. Using a unique dataset of 5048 such coalitions in combination with fieldwork conducted in several provinces, we analyze coalition patterns. In contrast to conventional ideological and office-seeking explanations we find that, at least until recently, in forming coalitions parties regularly prioritized immediate pay-offs from candidates – which mostly come in the form of cash payments – over longer-term office and patronage benefits. Attributing this finding to the limited influence that parties exert over politicians once they are elected in regional Indonesia, we highlight the interaction between coalition formation and the incentives that politicians have once in office.the Dutch Research Council(NWO, grant number 451-12-013