Clientelism and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa

Networks of Dependency

Laura Ruiz de Elvira, Christoph Schwarz, Irene Weipert-Fenner, Christoph H. Schwarz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351169226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One common demand in the 2011 uprisings in the MENA region was the call for 'freedom, dignity, and social justice.' Citizens rallied against corruption and clientelism, which for many protesters were deeply linked to political tyranny.

This book takes the phenomenon of the 2011 uprisings as a point of departure for reassessing clientelism and patronage across the entire MENA region. Using case studies covering Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies, it looks at how the relationships within and between clientelist and patronage networks changed before 2011. The book assesses how these changes contributed to the destabilization of the established political and social order, and how they affected less visible political processes. It then turns to look at how the political transformations since 2011 have in turn reconfigured these networks in terms of strategies and dynamics, and concomitantly, what implications this has had for the inclusion or exclusion of new actors. Are specific networks expanding or shrinking in the post-2011 contexts? Do these networks reproduce established forms of patron-client relations or do they translate into new modes and mechanisms?

As the first book to systematically discuss clientelism, patronage and corruption against the background of the 2011 uprisings, it will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Middle Eastern Studies. The book also addresses major debates in comparative politics and political sociology by offering 'networks of dependency' as an interdisciplinary conceptual approach that can 'travel' across place and time.

Part I

Conceptualising privilege and dependency in the MENA region

1 Multi-layered dependency

Understanding the transnational dimension of favouritism in the Middle East

Sina Birkholz

Introduction

In 2004, Roniger has called upon political scientists to move beyond the ‘intrastate analysis of political and administrative articulation’ and ‘devote more attention to transnational clientelistic forms and networks of dependency’ (Roniger 2004: 369). The following chapter heeds this call by rethinking how we approach the study of the transnational dimensions of clientelism and networks of dependency. Roniger’s increasing concern with transnationalism (e.g. Roniger 2011a, 2011b) reflects a broader trend in the study of politics. The central importance of trans- and international relations for national politics and societies of – among others – ‘developing countries’ (Leander 2001: 115) has been variously emphasised (Risse-Kappen 1995b: 4; Comaroff and Comaroff 2006). On the other hand, the crucial role that ‘local’, i.e. national and subnational, structures and processes play in shaping international interventions,¹ such as international development aid (Bonacker et al. 2017), the ‘great modern international project’, (Williams 2013: 1213) and liberal peace interventions, has also been increasingly recognised (Chandler 2013; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). Roniger even speaks of a ‘transnational turn’ that ‘has been shaped as well by anti-colonial and post-colonial scholarship’ (Roniger 2011b: 252).

In addition, recent developments in the Middle East have repeatedly highlighted the importance of transnational factors for political and societal transformations in the region. Political disenfranchisement and protests in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries in the past decade have, for example, been attributed to a breakdown of the social contract caused by changing social and economic policies (Bayat 2011; Joya 2011: 368–374; Amin 2012; Hafez 2012; Kaboub 2014). These policies themselves were partially the result of international economic policy intervention, such as structural adjustment programmes (Joya 2011: 370; Kaboub 2014;²Achy 2015: 303), and alignment with ‘neoliberal globalization’ (Amin 2012: 33), as various contributions in this volume highlight (see Introduction p. 1). Alternatively, the Arab uprisings have been interpreted as revealing the bankruptcy of a Western foreign policy that, by prioritising regime stability, has provided authoritarian regimes with economic, military and political support. Furthermore, international military intervention has decisively influenced the course of events in Libya, while the Syrian war has long become internationalised with various state and non-state actors (of which some are said to be clients and patrons of each other) involved directly on the ground or seeking to exert an influence from a distance. At the same time, the restoration of the authoritarian regime in Egypt after 2011, repeated violent confrontations between factions in Libya since the ousting of Gadhafi, and the electoral success of Islamist parties in a number of elections have been explained by referring to the (re-emerging) strength of patronage systems, partially relying on primordial or non-modern loyalties.³

These examples highlight that the interplay between inter- and transnational, national and subnational dynamics of domination and dependency are crucial for understanding the most recent developments. Yet, the link between international politics and intra-societal clientelism, as well as the existence of clientelism-like practices in transnational politics, has largely been left unexplored. In addition, dialogue between the relevant disciplines, i.e. international relations, comparative political science, anthropology and area studies, has generally remained limited. Once we embark on an analytic exploration of the transnational dimensions of networks of dependencies, however, two problems in the existing debates on clientelism come to the fore.

One is the analytical challenge of ‘upscaling’ from the micro-level – that is from clientelism as a personal, face-to-face interaction situated on the micro-level of inter-personal relations and limited by locality – to the meso- and macro-level, which is the functioning of and interaction between larger entities, such as organisations and states. Extending the conceptual reach of clientelism, partially in the form of upscaling, has though already ‘voided the concept of descriptive power’ (Hilgers 2011: 568). Merely transferring ‘clientelism’ to the level of states and inter-state relations without reconsidering the concept’s meaning and implications can only exacerbate this overextension. A second problem a transnational perspective needs to address is the modernist, essentialist bias of the academic and political discussion of clientelism and related phenomena. ‘Clientelism’, ‘patronage’, and currently in particular ‘corruption’ constitute a form of Orientalist ‘Othering’ and thereby support the construction of a problematic other in need of aid or intervention (Zinn 2005; Li 2007; Kühn 2015; Routley 2016).

Addressing these two challenges in our study of the transnational dimensions of networks of dependency demands that we strive for analytical precision so as to consciously break with binary constructs, while reflexively engaging with the implicit normativity of the debate. This entails various analytical moves sketched out in this article: fostering a critical awareness as to the genealogy of the concept of ‘clientelism’; recuperating the original meaning of clientelism and other concepts denoting specific political practices and relationships that ‘appeal (…) to our political voyeurism’ (Gellner 1977: 1); rediscovering distinctions that have been lost through the appropriation of these concepts into political science and international relations; distinguishing analytical levels and reconsidering the way we operate with scales; going beyond the mapping of illicit practices onto specific regions and understanding the continuity of such practices across locations and contexts, while paying attention to both the mutual entanglements across locations and scales and the specifics of a particular context; and finally, reflexively engaging with the implications of academic discourses on clientelism in the political project of intervention.

In pursuit of these goals, I suggest to use the term ‘favouritism’ as a sensitising concept (Blumer 1954). ‘Favouritism’ denotes relations and practices that are suspected of deviating from a universalist ideal of distribution. The questions whether a specific instance of favouritism indeed constitutes a clientelistic relationship, corrupt practice, or a form of patronage, and on which scale it takes place, are left to concrete empirical investigation. Like clientelism, favouritism is then located on a different analytical level than a network of dependency. It refers to practices and relationships, several of which can be combined in horizontal and vertical layers that together form a network.⁴ If employed in this way, ‘favouritism’ alerts us to the risks of an intentional or unintentional transfer of micro-level concepts to the macro-level and sharpens our attention for the continuity and interdependency of political practices across localities and analytical levels. It also renders the normativity in the process of identifying illicit practices more explicit and supports an effort to transcend the binary mapping of ‘sinister’ (Hilgers 2011: 572) practices onto ‘the Other’. Thus, this chapter aims to contribute to the ‘critical reflection on our analytical categories, our relation to the subjects of our study, and the potential power effects of social science discourse’ (Zinn 2005: 235) with regard to the transnational dimensions of networks of dependency.

From inter-personal to transnational relations: The challenge of upscaling clientelism

Interest in those dimensions of networks of dependencies that straddle the boundaries of the nation state is not new. Already in 1981, in the introduction to their seminal volume Political Clientelism, Patronage, and Development, Eisenstadt and Lemarchand (1981b) highlighted the importance of a research agenda addressing the international aspects of clientelism. They not only emphasised ‘(…) the importance of the international dimension in the analysis of patron-client relations’ but also the ‘necessity to distinguish between two aspects of this dimension’ (1981b: 3). As the first of these aspects, they identify the question ‘whether it is possible to apply the concept of client relations between states’, and instantly warn the reader that this ‘has yet to be very thoroughly thought through’ (ibid.). The second, in their eyes ‘more fruitful’ question is ‘whether a situation of dependence between states may give rise within their respective societies to conditions conducive to the development of patron-client relations’ (ibid.).

While often ignored, Eisenstadt and Lemarchand’s distinction provides a good starting point for thinking about transnational favouritism which I would like to develop further. Their elaborations highlight that, analytically, one can distinguish between intra-societal relations, international relations, i.e. the relationships between states or their governments, and the effect of international relations on intra-societal relations. I would like to add transnational relations to this list, referring to the relations between subnational entities across national borders or the relations between a subnational entity and an external state or government. Concrete examples for the former could be the relationship between leading politicians, between the liberal parties or between the national police academies from two (or more) different countries. Examples for the latter could be relationships between a non-state armed actor with (the government of)⁵ another state or the relationship between a domestic NGO with a donor government or international organisation. In addition to differentiating between these levels, I would like to maintain another analytical distinction employed by Eisenstadt and Lemarchand, namely that between the nature of a relationship or practice and its effect. For describing and analysing transnational networks of dependency, we can thus distinguish two questions: 1) whether the nature of a transnational relationship or practice is favouritist (clientelist, patronage-like, or corrupt); or 2) whether the effect generated by a certain transnational practice or relationship is the (re)production of favouritist dynamics. Obviously, a practice or relationship can be all of this: transnational and favouritist in nature and in effect. But analytically maintaining the difference can be helpful for understanding the complex layering of relationships and practices that constitute transnational networks of dependencies, as will become evident in the following consideration of clientelism and its upscaling. Furthermore, we render our critique of interventionist policies a far greater service if we know exactly what we are criticising – whether it is the unintended reinforcement of clientelism through otherwise non-favouritist policies, or the favouring of one party in an internal conflict over the other per se, or the effects of this favouring.

A brief recapitulation of the illicit triad: Clientelism, patronage, and corruption

Clientelism and adjacent phenomena have been identified in a variety of geographic and historic contexts and analysed by scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, area studies, political science, international relations, economics, and sociology (cf. Roniger 2004 for an overview). Empirically, the study of clientelism has not been limited to but clearly focused on societies in the Global South and the south of Europe (Zinn 2005: 130). In particular, the macro-level concepts of neopatrimonialism and the rentier state have a region-specific genealogy. From amongst the plethora of studies no shared definition emerges (see Hilgers 2011: 571, Newbury 2015: 2) and terms like clientelism, patronage, nepotism, neo-patrimonialism, vote-buying, and (political) corruption are often used interchangeably. Hilgers therefore argues that clientelism ‘is no longer clearly differentiated from neighbouring terms, making it a poor concept difficult to operationalise and to use for theory-building’ (2011: 568). In the following I will sketch out what I have identified as the conceptual core of clientelism across a number of studies and briefly compare this with the neighbouring terms ‘patronage’ and ‘corruption’. The aim here is not to solve the conceptual confusion once and for all, but, more modestly, to show that different concepts highlight different characteristics of favouritist relationships and practices. These differences need to be considered in our definitions so that they can guide us through the thicket of empirical research.

Most studies of clientelist relations provide their individual list of attributes describing the phenomenon (see for example Eisenstadt and Roniger 1984; Rieger 2003; Erdmann and Engel 2007; Muno 2010). One of the most concise definitions stems from Leca and Schemeil (1983: 455), who speak of three fundamental ingredients: inequality, reciprocity, and proximity. Eisenstadt and Roniger (1984: 48–49), on the other hand, provide an extensive list of nine characteristics, some of which are even further differentiated. This plurality notwithstanding, most definitions treat patron-client relations as informal, personal, and enduring. This means that there is a dyadic, lasting relationship between patron and client that involves repeated interaction but is not formally codified. As such, clientelist relations share important features with other interpersonal relationships, such as friendships (Eisenstadt and Ron...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Networks of dependency, a research perspective
• PART I: Conceptualising privilege and dependency in the MENA region
• PART II: Patron–client relations in the Neoliberal Era
• PART III: The role of brokers for networks of dependency
• Index