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Engineering popular support for long-ruling parties: the role of clientelism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2019

Qingjie Zeng
Qingjie Zeng*
Affiliation:
School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, 702 Wenke Building, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, PR China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: zqingjie@fudan.edu.cn
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Abstract

In electorally contested regimes, the incumbent party often uses clientelist exchanges to stay in power long after its underlying electoral support has evaporated. Existing studies failed to examine how the role of clientelism changes with the increasing tenure of the incumbent party. Combining data from the Afrobarometer project and information about partisan turnover, this article shows that the longer a party has remained in power, the more clientelist exchanges in the form of club goods and patronage will serve to bolster popular support for the ruling party. This is mainly because lengthy party duration facilitates the politicization of bureaucracy and other state resources essential for clientelist exchanges. Understanding the evolving role of clientelism under electoral contestation has profound implications for the study of phenomena such as dominant-party rule and democratic erosion.

Keywords

Clientelismdominant partyincumbency advantageparty durationvoter support
Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 75 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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