This is a consideration of political clientelism and its role in development at different stages and under different political systems. Clientelism refers to a personalized and reciprocal relationship between an inferior and a superior or an inferior group and a superior group commanding unequal resources. Status differences determine the complementary rights and duties in the client relationship. Clientelism is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the emergence of centralized state systems since it implies the breakdown and/or extension of kinship ties. Clientelism makes possible the social and economic transformations which facilitate the emergence of a state system. Feudal patrimonial and industrial types of clientelism are characterized. The relationship of clientelism to the processes of modernization and development is discussed.
Lemarchand et al. (Sat,) studied this question.