A Theory of Clientelistic Politics versus Programmatic Politics

Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee

No dp-317, Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics

Abstract: We provide a theoretical analysis of the distinction between clientelistic and programmatic politics and resulting consequences for policy choices and political competition. Clientelism arises when elected officials exercise ex post discretion over delivery of government transfers to citizens in an informal sector, and condition this on political support. Two party Downsian competition features ‘programmatic’ equilibria involving policy convergence and close elections if parties are equally popular ex ante. If the informal sector is large enough, these equilibria are locally unstable, and multiple asymmetric ‘clientelistic’ locally stable equilibria arise. Clientelistic equilibria involve policy divergence, lower supply of public goods, and higher inequality in vote shares. Comparative statics and welfare properties of the two classes of equilibria are related to existing empirical evidence.

Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://people.bu.edu/dilipm/wkpap/ClvsPrPolTheoryv6Aug2018.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bos:iedwpr:dp-317

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Program Coordinator ().