Patrons Clients And Policies

A study of patronage politics and the persistence of clientelism across a range of countries.

About interpersonal relations in society.

In the United States and Britain, capitalists organized in opposition to clientelism and demanded programmatic parties and institutional reforms.

Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism studies distributive politics: how parties and governments use material resources to win elections. The authors develop a theory that explains why loyal supporters, rather than swing voters, tend to benefit from pork-barrel politics; why poverty encourages clientelism and vote buying; and why redistribution and voter participation do not justify non-programmatic distribution.

Focusing on the period from 1840 to 1889, one of the leading historians on Brazil explores the specific ways in which granting protection, official positions, and other favors in exchange for political and personal loyalty worked to benefit the interests of wealthy Brazilians.

This book shows how Rwanda's mass courts for genocide crimes helped ensure political stability and authoritarian control for Rwandan elites.

The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places electoral politics and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor. They also assess whether voters reward politicians for targeted poverty alleviation programs.

Drawing on a rich trove of focus group data, interviews, and textual sources, Elaine Weiner's Market Dreams powerfully captures the varied responses of female managers and factory workers in the Czech Republic to their country's transition from socialism to capitalism. Her work, rooted in sociology and comparative feminism, is an important advance for the literature on women in Eastern Europe. "Market Dreams is a conceptually-sophisticated and empirically-rich account of how the discourses and practices of the free market penetrated the hearts and minds of everyday Czech citizens. Weiner's provocative analysis takes readers inside the worlds of female factory workers to expose the discontinuities between their radiant market dreams and their everyday realities--and juxtaposes them to the continuities experienced by female managers. In the process, it challenges many of our ideas about post/socialism, marketization, and gender and reveals the enduring power of stories in shaping social identities and actions." ---Lynne Haney, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University "Through interviews and a careful analysis of newspaper articles written in the first decade after the collapse of state socialism, Weiner explores the complicated interconnections between personal stories and the emerging neoliberal metanarrative of the free market in the Czech Republic after 1989. Her book transcends many of the dichotomies with which researchers of post-state socialism have been struggling: 'East' vs. 'West,' losers and winners, emancipation vs. oppression, etc., and thus makes a truly novel contribution to our understanding of women's lives after state socialism." ---Éva Fodor, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Central European University "Weiner's rich and innovative study of female Czech managers and workers exemplifies the importance of narrative analysis for understanding why gender and class have not (yet) reconfigured the sense of postcommunism's alternatives. This is critical reading for feminists, class analysts, and students of postcommunist social change." ---Michael Kennedy, Director, Center for European Studies, University of Michigan Elaine Weiner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at McGill University. Visit the author's website at: www.mcgill.ca/sociology/faculty/weiner/. Cover Credit: Frank Scherschel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images