Clientelistic Capture of Social Policy in Mexico

In this paper we seek to advance our understanding of the consequences of clientelism for policy-making in Mexico. More specifically, we study the conditions that shape the incentives of clientelistic actors (brokers, legislators, and parties) to sway legislation in the area of social policy so as to extract and secure rents to finance clientelistic networks. Hence, this paper sets out to answer the following research questions: (1) How do clientelistic actors influence social policy reforms through legislation? (2) Which actor constellations within the legislative decision-making process are more likely prone to clientelistic rent-seeking and rent-preserving behaviour? Based on an original data set on social policy legislation we analyse national social policies according to their susceptibility to clientelistic rent-seeking behaviour. Moreover, we use qualitative data based on elite and expert interviews to detect differences in the incentive structure and behaviour of clientelistic versus policy-oriented political actors in the legislative decision-making process to ultimately explain differences in the quality of social policy legislation in Mexico.