Political Clientelism in Mexico: Bridging the Gap Between Citizens and the State

This article explores practices of political clientelism in a native village in Mexico City during recent elections (2006, 2012), aiming to create more conceptual clarity and to demonstrate the usefulness of ethnographic approaches. Seen from the clients' and the brokers' perspective, political clientelism and vote buying are two different practices, carried out in different ways, with different degrees of legitimacy. The problem‐solving network studied here bridges the gap between the citizen and the state, while the political operators hope to be rewarded with public employment. In this case, one candidate‐patron changed parties a few months before the 2012 elections, and the electoral statistics provide indications of the numerical effectiveness of his clientelist network. Multiparty competition, instead of undermining clientelist practices, appears to “democratize” them.     

Re-politicisation as post-NPM response? Municipal companies in a Norwegian context

This is an exploratory study of re-politicisation of municipal companies in one Norwegian municipality. Unlike re-municipalisation, which seems to imply the reversal of privatisation and out-contracting, and the reinstitution of municipal ownership, the Norwegian case demonstrates a continued adherence to the provision of certain public services through municipal companies. However, our study reveals increasing re-politicisation, especially with respect to board composition. The mechanisms behind this process seem first and foremost to be a post-new public management (NPM) response (re-centring) combined with efforts of rebalancing NPM-inspired solutions without changing them in any fundamental way (learning from experience).