Social Theory and the Sociology of Clientelism: Groundwork for a Gramscian Alternative

The category “clientelism” captures a very wide variety of political phenomena, wider perhaps than other peer concepts. It also harbors the potential to serve as an alternative to both liberal institutionalism and power elite theory. But recent trends in the literature have not realized the category’s potential. The key problem with the literature is that it is on shaky conceptual ground. Toward a revamped sociology of clientelism, this essay attends to associated theoretical problems and potential payoffs. It surveys definitions and probes normative issues at the heart of clientelism. It identifies the accomplishments and limitations of the leading theoretical traditions, offshoots of neo-Durkheimian gift theory and neo-Weberian principal-agent theory. Drawing instead from Gramscian theory, it proposes that we view soliciting subordination as the central feature of clientelism. This approach offers both a lens for unifying phenomena hitherto thought to be very different under a single conceptual scheme and a model for explaining political development. This helps enable the category to serve in a quite general theory which could ultimately provide an alternative to liberal-institutional and elite-pact brands of political sociology.