Clientelism and Democratic Representation in Comparative Perspective

Scholars have offered much speculation, but little evidence on the consequences of clientelism for political representation and citizens' socio-economic life chances. The volume edited by Ruth-Lovell and Spirova makes a big step forward to focus attention on these subjects and present pertinent results. It will be a model and agenda setter for future research. -- Herbert P. Kitschelt, Duke University

A timely and insightful contribution to the ongoing debate on the drivers of clientelism and its consequences for democratic representation. This collection of essays, spanning many regions of the world - from Latin America to India, from Europe to Asia - investigates both sides of democratic representation - delegation and accountability - analyzing clientelism in both roles as dependent and independent variable. Building on a consolidated literature, the editors, Saskia Ruth-Lovell and Maria Spirova, and the other contributors to this volume arrive at some important conclusions - for example, that ethnic or other types of segmental politics are fully compatible with the adoption of clientelistic exchanges or that clientelism indeed tends to undermine its own financial sustainability and lead to suboptimal allocation of resources - by means of often innovative quantitative and qualitative analyses that push the frontier of research on clientelism forward. -- Simona Piattoni, University of Trento

Saskia Pauline Ruth-Lovell is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the NCCR Democracy at the University of Zurich and the Centre for Democracy Studies in Aarau, Switzerland. She holds a Diploma in Latin American Studies and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cologne (Germany). Her research focusses on the quality of democracy, the crisis of representation in Latin America, and the phenomenon of clientelism and populism. Her article on ‘Clientelism and the Utility of the Left-Right Dimension in Latin America’ has recently been published in Latin American Politics and Society.