Political Clientelism in Political Studies

This article assesses the state of research on political clientelism by examining two collections of recent articles on that subject. It finds that the collections include many descriptions of change in the nature of patron-client relationships as well as some models of political systems containing clientelist components and some two-case comparisons. But the collections contain no reports on attempts to test hypotheses concerning clientelism in a systematic fashion. This is explained in large part by the nature of patron-client relationships and other dyadic structures: They are amorphous, latent, elusive, and ubiquitous, and have certain problems of conception and explanation. The systematic testing of hypotheses will require ways to measure dyadic structures. Such measurement should first be carried out at the middle or institutional level of political systems. It is suggested that dyads may be identified and measured most easily if they are conceived as addenda attached to institutionalized relationships or structures.