Pervasive clientelism has been a feature of Africa’s non-democratic states for decades. As they move to multi party politics, will greater accountability lessen clientelism? Will clientelism evolve into new forms? This paper is taken from a collection of essays on the linkages between citizens and politicians in modern democracies. It examines the persistence and evolution of clientelism in Africa since independence. It argues that the patterns emerging in the wake of the Third Wave of democratisation are often similar to those which emerged in post-independence Africa.
Despite some shortcomings, the literature on clientelism that emerged in the early independence era is still useful. It outlines three types of clientelism: (i) Tribute, the traditional practice of gift exchange in peasant societies, (ii) Patronage, the use of state resources to provide jobs and services to political clienteles, (iii) Prebends, where an individual is given a public office in order for them to gain personal control over state resources.
The “machine politics” model, which argued that that Third World parties demonstrated little ideological coherence, were driven by the objective of gaining power, and resorted to systematic patronage, was popular in this literature. The introduction of mass suffrage meant intense political competition, and so large party organisations developed to manage a large clientele in a centralized fashion. However, if the precise function of clientelism in African regimes is analysed, it becomes apparent why African states came to rely more on prebends than patronage to create political stability. African leaders found it more convenient to eliminate elections rather than to continue to rely on patronage. Political parties lacked the capacity to monitor whether voter’s responded to patronage with support, and so came to rely more on decentralized coalitions of elites.
Several basic points about the nature of clientelism between independence and the 1990s can be made:
- The main function of clientelism was to forge alliances across social elites in young, multi-ethnic and poorly integrated systems.
- Prebendalism was the preferred form of clientelism due to the absence of elections and structural factors such as the small size of civil services. These were allowed to decay, and substantial prebends were given only to a small group of people.
- The more democratic the rule, and the more institutionalised the regime, the more clientelism was limited to patronage.
Several patterns have emerged during the Third Wave of democratisation:
- Authoritarian patterns persist: There is still extensive gerrymandering, harassment of opposition parties and manipulation of voter registration.
- Party systems often consist of a large, dominant party surrounded by many small, volatile parties. Opposition parties have little incentive to form coalitions, as this reduces people’s ability to make deals with those in power.
- There have been few programmatic debates in electoral politics over the last decade, with most parties adopting a vague populism.
- Election campaigns are usually conducted on the basis of personal and ethno-regional appeals for support. This is not necessarily a destabilising factor.
- Clientelism in Africa is best understood as a mechanism for the accommodation of a fairly narrow elite rather than a logic of mass party patronage.
- In a small number of countries, relatively liberal democracies are emerging, and prebendalism is in decline as a systematic process. In less democratic regimes, where incumbents remain in place, electoral politics have probably not disrupted patterns of clientelism.
