ABSTRACT
The central importance of transnational relations for contemporary politics and societies is being increasingly recognised. The study of clientelism still needs to catch up with this development, however. This chapter aims to lay the conceptual foundation for a systematic analysis of the link between transnational relations and intra-societal clientelism on the one hand, and clientelism-like practices in international politics on the other. The author introduces ‘favouritism’ as a sensitising concept that highlights the omnipresence and continuity of clientelistic, corrupt and patronage practices across scales and societies. The chapter summarises debates about this family of ‘illicit’ practices and critically discusses their scaling-up from the micro-level in the research on client-patron-states, neopatrimonialism, and the rentier state. The author then moves on to problematise the essentialist and normative bias in academic and political debates about favouritism. The resultant ‘Othering’ relies on binary constructions and renders the ‘local’ as problematic, therefore providing the justification for interventions which themselves often (re)produce networks of dependency. To move beyond such a dualism and its problematic political consequences, the chapter suggests a reflexive, inter-disciplinary, and post-colonial approach for studying the transnational dimensions of networks of dependency.
