Relational Clientelism, Information Processing, and Accountability

Abstract Research shows that providing information on incumbent programmatic performance often has limited impact on citizen attitudes towards incumbents, even if citizens tend to care strongly about corruption and service delivery. We use a survey experiment in South Africa and Tunisia to study if relational clientelism, a type of clientelism often valued by clients, plays a role in this puzzle. We present respondents with a radiocast that varies the profile of the politician (clientelistic vs. neutral) and his performance in service delivery and corruption (good vs. bad). We find that, when clientelistic politicians are valued, performance information on them matters less than for neutral politicians. The effect appears to operate via motivated reasoning: Respondents are less likely to process negative performance information when exposed to the clientelistic profile. Our findings suggest that, in certain contexts, relational clientelism is a valued candidate characteristic that can offset bad programmatic performance akin to co-partisanship or co-ethnicity.