Is Clientelism (Only) for the Poor? Insights on Class and Clientelism from a Survey Experiment in Lebanon

Clientelism—the exchange of goods and services for political support—is widely understood as a phenomenon targeted at and demanded by poorer constituents. In this short article, we question that assumption by exploring class differences in preferences for clientelism conditional on the type of goods and services provided. We explore these intuitions through a conjoint experiment in Lebanon, where candidates in national elections make different clientelist pledges of varying value. We find that the poor and rich both disfavor lower-value clientelism, that the rich and poor react similarly toward different types of clientelism overall, and that the rich prefer higher-value clientelist pledges from copartisan candidates, whereas this distinction does not hold among poorer voters. Our findings suggest a need to reconsider previously assumed linear ties between class and clientelism and raise questions for further research about how the rich and poor engage differently with patronage-based parties in some developing country contexts.