Political Parties and Grassroots Clientelist Strategies in Urban Turkey: One Neighbourhood at a Time

Both principal Turkish political parties make extensive use of patron–client networks, but in very different ways. The CHP relies on competing local brokers and synchronous vote buying. The AKP is at the centre of a network of public and private funding turning social policy to clientelist ends. Socially anchored AKP activists link the party to voters, allowing it to target social assistance for political advantage and take credit for improvement in local conditions. The case presented in this paper provides a natural experiment suggesting that this distinction is an important explanation for the AKP’s electoral success in low-income urban areas.     

After servitude: bonded histories and the encumbrances of exchange in indigenizing Bolivia

Since 2006, Bolivia has undertaken a dramatic program of state reform aimed at overcoming the injustices of the nation’s colonial and neoliberal past. In the process, rural practices and sensibilities originating in the former hacienda system have assumed new importance, arising as volatile sites of state intervention and political critique. Like eighteenth-century Bourbon administrators, state reformers today express concern with agrarian patronage, which, they argue, facilitates continued land dispossession and reproduces a particularly servile Quechua-speaking peasantry. Yet, despite reform efforts, hacienda-based ties remain crucial to rural life, structuring acts of redistributive exchange and providing a relational medium by which former landlords attempt to make amends for past violence. By taking seriously the moral and political dimensions of post-hacienda patronage, this contribution challenges dominant frameworks of indigenous justice to foreground the reconciliatory possibilities of exchange relations rooted in a bonded past.     

Weak states and uneven pluralism: lessons from Mali and Kyrgyzstan

We argue that certain important democratic practices and elements of pluralism are lasting features of political systems in many poor countries. Because of state weakness, such arrangements work to the benefit of both elites and citizens. The broader citizenry and civil society enjoy significant political freedoms and greater access to foreign aid. Elites tolerate these limited civil liberties and regular elections because they produce few costly consequences due to state incapacity. We evaluate this theory of ‘uneven pluralism’ in poor countries using evidence from a paired comparison of Mali and Kyrgyzstan. These two countries have experienced significant political turbulence, but on balance have shown a persistent and robust commitment to a free press, transparent elections, and respect for freedom of association. Our theory suggests that uneven pluralism is likely to continue in countries like Mali and Kyrgyzstan, even as significant limits on judicial independence, persistent corruption, and lack of government transparency make democratic consolidation unlikely.     

Understanding the political goals of non-binding resolutions: evidence from the Mexican Chamber of Deputies

By primarily focusing on bill initiatives, the literature on legislatures and parliaments has understudied other important legislative instruments -such as non-binding resolutions, minutes or speeches- which might help parties and legislators achieve their electoral and policy goals. Non-binding resolutions (NBRs) do not carry the force of law and are primarily used for parties or legislators’ position taking and the request of government actions. This article examines the political goals of NBRs by examining these tools in the lower chamber of the Mexican Congress. Employing a novel dataset, we claim that legislators strategically utilise NBRs to strengthen their relationship with their political principals. We find differences on the use of these instruments across political parties, based on the types of policy areas they choose to target. The analysis also indicates that SMD legislators tend to introduce more particularistic NBRs that might further their political careers at the subnational level.     

Nothing personal: explaining the rise and decline of political machines in Ukraine

This article is the first to explore and compare the dynamics of party-building between the three main political forces that competed for power during the last decade in Ukraine – Viktor Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina (Our Ukraine), Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), and Viktor Yanukovych's Partiya Rehioniv (Party of Regions). We show that their political trajectories can be explained by differences in their organizational structure and distribution of resources within the party's leadership. When a party depends on resources linked primarily to one individual, it will develop a personalized decision-making structure advantaging its leader, and the party's fortunes will be tied to the popularity (or lack of same) of the leader. By contrast, when a party relies equally on resources from several groups, a more consociational style of decision-making is likely to emerge. Using Ukraine as a case study, the article shows that personality-led parties will be more vulnerable to defections and less capable of absorbing potential competitors. On the other hand, coalition-led parties are better capable of surviving defeats, maintaining internal cohesion, and merging with like-minded parties.     

Explaining municipal governance in Kosovo: local agency,credibility and party patronage

ABSTRACT

What can explain the varied effectiveness of internationally led attempts at statebuilding? This article seeks to answer this question by comparing the contrasting trajectories of governance in two municipalities in Kosovo: Hani i Elezit/Elez Han and Kamenica. In Hani i Elezit, evidence suggests that effective and accountable governance is embedded. However, in Kamenica informal and clientelist practices persist and residents are less satisfied with the municipality’s performance. As the nature and extent of internationally led statebuilding has been similar in both municipalities, explaining variation requires an analytical shift to how local leadership interacts with, receives and ultimately shapes statebuilding processes. The data are based on fieldwork from 2012 to 2015. The article focuses on two critical dimensions of statebuilding: capacity building and social accountability. It argues that the impact of externally led statebuilding strategies depends on the orientation of the political leadership of the municipalities. The article identifies features of the political environment, namely credibility and the organization of political parties, which constrain the kind of public-oriented leadership necessary for effective and accountable governance.     

Elected or Selected? The Continuing Constitutional Conundrum of House of Lords Reform

The 1911 Parliament Act decreed that Lords reform was ‘an urgent question which brooks no delay’, yet the subsequent 112 years have witnessed only sporadic and inchoate reforms. The issue has invariably suffered both from interparty disagreement between the Conservatives and Labour and, more importantly, intraparty disagreements owing to the divergent views and irreconcilable disagreements among Labour MPs over ‘what is to be done?’, and recognition that any reform which enhanced the legitimacy of the second chamber would threaten the pre-eminence of the House of Commons and a Labour government therein. A similar fate is likely to befall the Labour Party's latest proposal for replacing the current House of Lords with an elected second chamber. Meanwhile, the Conservative peer, Lord Norton, is seeking to place the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC) on a statutory basis and impose stricter criteria on prime ministerial nominations for peerages. Yet, this would still leave any Prime Minister with considerable powers of patronage in appointing members of the second chamber. This article therefore suggests that a Prime Minister should only be permitted to nominate 20 per cent of the membership, with the rest appointed via HOLAC itself, thereby depoliticising the process as far as practicably possible, and imbuing it with greater public trust.     

Patronage and empowerment in the central Amazon

The shift from modern to post‐modern politics in the Central Amazon is critically evaluated. While considerable empowerment of previously marginalised. Amerindians, rubber tapers and frontier peasants has occurred, patronage networks remain top down in their decision‐making process, significant horizontal political mobilisation between different social actors has not emerged and grassroots political organisation has been stymied by authoritarian politics at the state level. Consequently, as empowerment is supposed to lie at the heart of building sustainable livelihoods in the Amazon, by this line of logic, the future of the region would seem to be seriously compromised.     

Heaven's Talent Scout: Prime Ministerial Power,Ecclesiastical Patronage and the Governance of Britain

In the last decade the role of the Prime Minister in the process for making senior Church appointments has changed significantly. The man who replaces Dr Rowan Williams—and it will be a man—will be appointed through a procedure in which the Prime Minister is expected to enjoy no choice but to simply confirm the Church of England's preferred candidate. The aim of this article is to draw upon fresh empirical research in order to explore why and how the politics and governance of ecclesiastical patronage has been recalibrated in this way. More importantly this article seeks to embed the study of ecclesiastical patronage within a much broader appreciation of how other forms of ministerial patronage have also become tightly constrained. This, in itself, forges a connection between the role of politicians in senior Church appointments, on the one hand, and a much richer and broader seam of research and writing that poses distinct questions about the nature of modern governance, the benefits of depoliticisation, the accountability of appointment commissions, the capacity of politicians and the future of democracy.