El clientelismo y la compra de votos en América Latina: lecciones de la comparación de Paraguay y Guatemala

Objective/context: Four decades after democratization in Latin America, particularistic ties—such as clientelism and vote buying—continue to exist between politicians and citizens in the region. This article seeks to understand how these practices have evolved over recent decades. Methodology: This study first draws on an original database encompassing all empirical articles from twenty-two Latin American political science journals and six Latin Americanist journals published between 2010 and 2022. It then examines two prototypical case studies based on secondary literature and press reviews. Conclusions: This article puts forward two main arguments. On one hand, clientelism and vote buying are relatively understudied in the region’s leading journals, and there are distinct conceptual, methodological, and empirical approaches in Spanish- and English-language scholarship. On the other hand, the article argues that, with the weakening of Latin American political parties, the overall logic of particularistic ties in the region is shifting from party-based clientelism (as seen in Paraguay) toward vote buying through independent local leaders (as seen in Guatemala). Originality: This article contributes to the literature on the transformation of particularistic ties and how they are studied in Latin America. First, it provides an original content analysis of Latin American and Latin Americanist journals from 2010 to 2022. Second, it synthesizes the main features of clientelism and vote buying in Paraguay and Guatemala—two relatively understudied cases that, despite showing high levels of particularistic practices, serve as prototypical examples of these two phenomena.