Penalties for Particularism and Partisanship? Citizens’ Preferences for Legal Punishment of Clientelism

Kristin Michelitch, Jeremy Horowitz and Giacomo Lemoli

No 24-1603, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: In weak-state settings, clientelism is persistent yet normatively fraught, constituting a “legal gray area”. This study examines two key features of commonplace clientelism that may govern whether and to what extent citizens deem it punishable by the law. We posit a “par-ticularism penalty,” by which citizens desire greater punishment for actions targeting narrower social groups, and an “outgroup actor penalty”, by which preferred punishment is greater for ethnic-political opponents. A survey experiment with Kikuyu and Luo respondents in Kenya reveals that respondents prefer more punishment for explicitly targeting supporters — coethnics or copartisans — versus general people, with little difference between coethnics and co-partisans, regardless of the perpetrator’s partisanship. At the same time, they systematically prefer more punishment for partisan outgroup actors. These findings underscore that public opinion would support a legal evolution away from clientelism towards supporters, even as citizens remain more lenient towards ingroup members.

Date: 2024-12, Revised 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tse:wpaper:130034

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