I discovered the term clientelism and tbh I thought it sounded pretty similar to corruption. Tried to see if there were any connections through it in google but was wondering if someone could explain the connection to me. Doesn’t have to be ELI5, it can be ELI10 hahahah.
In: Economics
In its broadest sense, clientelism can include bribery. Citizens given politicians something valuable; politicians use their power to do something the citizens want.
However, clientelism is often used to describe a relationship where the “something valuable” citizens give is their vote. Here the line between “buying votes” and “winning votes with policies citizens like” can be fuzzy. With clientelism, the relationship has to be conditional. The citizen must prove they voted for the politician (this is why any personal documentation of one’s vote, even naïve ones like a ballot selfie, are illegal in the US), and the politician must give the benefit only to citizens who voted for them.
So in the end, clientelism is a type of corruption if you define clientelism to include bribery or corruption to include any sort of bad behavior on the part of a politician. However, there are absolutely forms of corruption (like voter intimidation or suppression) that are not clientelism.
Clientelism: Candidate advertises his voters “vote for me, and I’ll give you a fixed income/goods/etc” The alternate version is “Don’t vote for me, and you’ll loose your fixed income and etc”
Corruption: Candidate wins and now has to manage the State. He gathers potential suppliers and tells them “Bribe me, and you’ll win the public contracts for this, this and that”. Or, if the candidate is a legislator “Bribe me, and I’ll vote as you want regarding this, this and that law”
Of course, both can meet in candidate advertising businessmen “Vote for me and I’ll give you the contracts and laws you want”, but that’s usually called “democracy” instead of “clientelism” or “corruption” because all the people involved have a lot of money
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