ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to place the concept of political clientelism within the mainstream of the literature on developmental politics. It attempts to incorporate the notion of clientelism into theories of development in the hope that it may provide a useful theoretical connection between micro- and macro-level or state-centered analyses. Notables and influentials commanding unequal or non-additive resources may in fact relate to each other in a manner not unlike that of patrons and clients, and the analytic structure of clientelism may reappear in the guise of concrete institutional structures that have all the outward appurtenances of a legal-rational universe. Ad hoc, transitory relationships may be substituted for the more permanent nexus that normally prevails between patrons and clients; the scope of their relationships may, likewise, become more restricted; and the affective component may play only a minor role in binding them together. The transactions involved in clientelist relationships also vary.
