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Political Clientelism in Mexico: Bridging the Gap between Citizens and the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Turid Hagene
Turid Hagene*
Affiliation:
Oslo and Akershus University College. turid.hagene@hioa.no
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Abstract

This article explores practices of political clientelism in a native village in Mexico City during recent elections (2006, 2012), aiming to create more conceptual clarity and to demonstrate the usefulness of ethnographic approaches. Seen from the clients' and the brokers' perspective, political clientelism and vote buying are two different practices, carried out in different ways, with different degrees of legitimacy. The problem-solving network studied here bridges the gap between the citizen and the state, while the political operators hope to be rewarded with public employment. In this case, one candidate-patron changed parties a few months before the 2012 elections, and the electoral statistics provide indications of the numerical effectiveness of his clientelist network. Multiparty competition, instead of undermining clientelist practices, appears to “democratize” them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , Spring 2015 , pp. 139 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2015

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