27733638

Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
Client-Ship and Citizenship in Latin America

Author(s): Lucy Taylor
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 213-227
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
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Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 213-227, 2004
Client-ship and Citizenship in Latin

America
LUCY TAYLOR
Department of International Politics, University of Wales,
Aberystwyth, UK
This article explores the development of political relationships between

people and politicians since around 1820 in Latin America. In par
ticular, it develops the idea of client-ship as a form of political agency
and contrasts it to citizenship, linking both to 'natural' and 'historical'
interpretations of inequality. The piece claims that client-ship has dom
inated political relations and that its twin tools of charisma and votes
for-goods allows it to thrive today in the form of neo-populism. In
contrast, citizenship has been thwarted by the efforts of parties which
control political agency by imposing norms of intellectual superiority
and hierarchies of disdain. Throughout, I argue that issues of race,
gender and class are central to political relationships which are the
cultural terrain of power, and conclude that parties must begin to take
citizens - and citizenship - seriously if they wish to avert a crisis of
democracy.
Keywords: clientelism, citizenship, history, participation, patronage,

political parties.
It is very complicated being a citizen in Latin America. On the one hand everyone
learns about freedom of speech and civil rights at school, everyone must turn out to
vote in the elections or pay a hefty fine, and all the pronouncements from the UN and
NGO leaflets explain how people have a right to health care. Yet the reality of life is
very different - opinions can be silenced and legal judgments can be bought, the parties
are stuffed with cronies while the ballot boxes are stuffed with votes, and the only way
to get anything done is to 'pay an extra fee' or ask a 'friend' to cut through the red tape
on your behalf. In Latin America, such discrepancies and blatant inconsistencies lead to
a rather contradictory relationship to democracy because it is so highly prized yet so
obviously distorted. Latin Americans today have a good grasp of what their citizen
rights should be and they are perfectly capable of recognising cronyism, procedural
shenanigans, institutional bias and a rotten rule of law - and they complain loudly
about corruption. That is, they use the yard-stick of rights and democratic citizenship
to measure the shortcomings of their own political system, and yet most continue to
participate in the social practices associated with a skewed polity, especially the
? 2004 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishing,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, USA. 213
Lucy Taylor
commerce in favours-for-friends and the purchase of votes. Similarly, despite the strong
support for democratic ideals (equality, freedom, etc.) and a reality of at least super
ficial d?mocratisation, the key political trend in the region is the return to popularity of
the political strong-man alongside the collapse in support for more conventional
political parties. What does this say about Latin American citizenship? That it has
been incomplete, fleeting and poorly anchored in the reality of Latin American social
relationships. A more accurate depiction of political relations between politicians and
people is, perhaps, to be found in what I call client-ship. Client-ship is the political
component of clientelism which, whilst being embedded in the social, economic and
cultural elements, is the location and expression of agency (Auyero, 2001; Conniff,
1999; Roniger and Gunes-Ayata, 1994; Schmidt etal., 1977).1
Here I should clarify my terms. For me, citizenship is founded on autonomous
political agency. This combines the tools and framework of citizenship (formalised
legal rights and responsibilities) with a sense of identity as a political being (a politico
cultural element) which brings to life the sleeping potential of the rules and procedures
of the Bill of Rights. As such, my definition sees citizens as being the ultimate keepers
of sovereignty and it assumes that political rights are the core and soul of citizenship,
because they bestow agency (Mouffe, 1992; Taylor, 1998). Citizenship comprehends
civil rights (relating to freedom of expression and legal matters) and political rights (to
elect or be a candidate) which are negative rights setting out mechanisms regulating
human interaction. Welfare rights seek to provide the necessities of human existence
(such as health, education, shelter, sustenance) and as such they require intervention in
order to distribute social goods within society. These positive rights recognise two
important principles: that excessive inequality restricts the ability of citizens to exercise
civil and political rights; that inequality is systematic and linked to social/class struc
tures which condition people's lives (Barbalet, 1988; Marshall, 1950).
In a democratic state populated by citizens we have some expectation of equality
between people, some notion that rights should - and indeed could - be made sub
stantive, some idea that democracy is 'real' and that the constitution is worth the paper
it is written on (Pateman, 1970; Turner, 1986). Citizenship's opposite yet twin idea of
client-ship offers a very different scenario. Firstly, client-ship is not about equality but
inequality; it is about gaining the advantage over one's rival, about professing to be el
patron's most loyal supporter, about selling oneself as deserving of privilege. Secondly,
it is not about rights but about favours; it is about making deals, about agreeing to lend
support in return for material benefit, and it allows some opportunity to exit the deal if
the bargain is not fulfilled. Thirdly, it is not about democracy but about negotiated
authoritarianism; that is, the power relationships between the parties are acknow
ledged - and even accepted - as being inherently and steeply unequal but each needs
the other in order to further their cause, and as such even the subaltern dealer can wield a
little power. Finally, it is not about formal relationships but personal ties; it does not
concern the making of laws but involves dealing with contingent and short term needs,
1 The following article iterates aspects of the argument of my forthcoming book (2006).
Many assertions concerning contemporary issues are inspired by research and
interviews conducted with politicians and civil society actors in Argentina and Chile
in the Spring of 2000 (see Taylor, 2003).
214 ? 2004 Society for Latin American Studies
Client-ship and Citizenship in Latin America
and it is not mediated by procedures or rules but by social custom, expectations,

individual personality quirks and lived experience.
As I see it, there are two currencies which form and facilitate these compacts:
charisma and a 'goods-for-power' deal. One of the constants of Latin American history
has been the emergence of super-charismatic leaders who have held power in their
hands alone and have shaped politics in their name - Bol?var, Per?n, Chavez. Their
ability to exercise a symbolic force way beyond their actual dimensions is the essence of
their power - they thrill and awe their audience with their energy and personal
magnetism and, because it is so plain that they are bigger and better than anyone
else, they make sense of 'natural' hierarchies (Chasteen, 1993; Ionescu and Gellner,
1970). As mere people-in-the-plaza, we get caught in their sway and are glad to give
them our devotion, relieved that the king has come to save us, comforted that we are
able, at last, to surrender our troubles to a higher being. For the object of the charis
matic gaze, this creates both emotion (hope, love, gratitude, relief) and identity (a sense
of belonging, pride and common purpose focused on the 'great man'). The latter point
is developed particularly by Auyero (2001) in his politico-anthropological study of
contemporary Peronists in Argentina. The client's political identity is forged in the
shadow of el patr?n and it is the patron who informs the client's thoughts, gives
meaning to the client's political actions and provides a figurehead which brings unity
and a sense of commonality between clients. This creates a personal link between
people and leader which can spark fervent devotion - we might think here of Evita
(Fraser and Navarro, 1996). The question of identity - self-identification as a political
being - is as central to client-ship as it is to citizenship, yet the source of the identity lies
not with the person her or himself, but with the patron.
If charisma/identity is one constitutive element of the patron-client relationship, the
other is the deal: votes-for-goods. People support a certain patron because they gamble
that to do so will improve their own or their family's prospects (Gay, 1995; Lazar,
2004). Thus, fighting for one caudillo rather than another was an economic as well as a
political choice, given that fame and fortune beckoned those on the winning side, while
death or dispossession awaited those who lost (Lynch, 1983). The populists of the
1940s adapted this idea to the era of state expansion and intervention, and won
sustained support by assisting the lower classes through wage rises, house-building
programmes and pro-labour legislation, whilst courting the middle classes with state
employment and services. Neo-populism, meanwhile, maintains the habit by investing
in the very poorest and most marginalised, despite having to operate in a context of
public spending cuts and privatisation (Weyland, 1996; Mauceri, 1997).
Like citizenship, client-ship combines a capacity to act politically with a political
identity which, when fused, creates political agency or what I call '-shipness'. This is
exercised, for both client and citizen, through their ability to bestow or withhold that
most precious of political currencies: legitimacy. In practical terms, this means that
political participation is a deceptive measure of citizenship because participation under
conditions of client-ship is as meaningful as that under citizenship. What is different is
that client-ship is founded on an unmovably unequal relationship between leader and
masses, patron and client, which can never aspire to equality (because leaders are
'natural born' leaders). Citizenship, on the other hand, is predicated on an assumption
? 2004 Society for Latin American Studies 215
Lucy Taylor
of equality between leader and masses, politician and voter. This is the crucial
distinction which allows us to analyse afresh the working class and subaltern move
ments of the twentieth century, focusing on whether ordinary people ask for more from
their 'betters', or whether they demand more from their equals.
Underpinning such ideas about human agency are understandings of inequality and
power, and here I borrow typologies from David Goldberg's The Racial State (2002).
Goldberg focuses on the racial aspect of inequality but also helps to clarify the
relationship between elite and subaltern more generally. The first typology 'naturalism'
focuses on biological, 'natural' and God-given explanations for why some people are
richer and more powerful than others. Its central idea - that some people or races
simply are 'better' than others (more clever, stronger, more far-sighted) - is central to
patronage politics and client-ship, and requires that both the dominant and the sub
ordinate elements in the equation agree with this interpretation of society. This rela
tionship works because although naturalism oppresses the subordinated (women, the
poor, racial 'others'), it also recognises the responsibility of the 'superior' to provide
security to the inferior, and makes sense of inequality through social relations which
mimic family dependency, paternalism and infantilism. The political and social
strength of the dominant comes from their ability to protect the weaker elements and
it feeds off the grateful support which this generates. Conservative gender relations
observe that women are both 'naturally' inferior due to their sex and also require
paternalist control because they are the gatekeepers to the next generation and as such
they hold the future stability of society in their hands (Loomba, 1998).
The second explanation for inequality paradoxically rests on the liberal tenet that
everyone is equal. Such arguments state that people have the same capacity to develop
skills and reasoning, and they have the same inalienable rights, but what matters is
what they do with them; inequality is based not on biology, then, but on merit.
Goldberg calls this 'historicism'. He argues that liberals apply such reasoning, in
particular, to the professional classes who see themselves as being the intellectual and
economic entrepreneurs of development, modernisation, progress and improvement.
This also means that liberalism can live comfortably alongside capitalism, and can
tolerate unequal outcomes so long as it maintains the fiction of the level playing field. It
is for this reason that rules and rights are so crucial, because they allow liberals to claim
equality whilst ignoring the social structures of inequality (such as patriarchy or
racism) which help to create unequal lives. In partial recognition of this, liberals deploy
two myths; firstly that everyone is improvable, especially through education; secondly,
that the inferior need only copy the successful and they too will achieve success (Hale,
1986). Thus Black or indigenous people must 'whiten' themselves through dressing,
speaking and eating in particular ways, while poor people should strive for middle class
employment, social mores and tastes. Success is measured according to their capacity to
put their old barbaric or emotional ways behind them - but, of course, they will never
be quite as good as 'the real thing' and must play eternal catch-up in the human race
(Bhaba, 1994).
At first glance, historicism appears to be less racist but in fact it perpetuates the key
supremacist assumptions while cloaking them in a fictitious idealism and laying the
blame for poverty and powerlessness at the feet of the poor and oppressed (Goldberg,
2002). The liberal-historicist explanation pays attention to the surface structures of

power (such as rights) but fails to seek out the socially embedded bias which distorts
the exercise of rights, nor does it stop to question its own definition of a 'good' person
or society. Actually, conservatives and liberals (understood in broad terms) largely
agree on which people are 'wrong' and who deserves to wield power over whom.
Following Goldberg, I would argue that political domination in Latin America since
1820 (and before) has explained inequality in political power, social status and eco
nomic assets through one or other of these two devices; natural supremacy or deserved
dominance.
The Struggle for Political Agency
The first elections of the 1820s-1840s had an important impact because they focused
political participation in time and space, and through their performative character
allowed people (both men and women) a moment to express their views. Let us be
clear, Latin American elections were not meaningful exercises in the selection of
representatives, as they were corrupt, exclusionary and often violent (Sabato, 2001;
Valenzuela 1996; Warren, 1996). Moreover, most 'representatives' were elected indir
ectly. The criteria for candidacy restricted the pool of possible politicians to a tiny elite,
and only a small number of male residents could vote as citizens, given property
owning and literacy qualifications (Peloso, 1996). Still, the accounts of elections tell
of mass meetings in town plazas thronging with men and women shouting and
applauding, fiesta-like marches with music and drums, polemical wars in leaflets and
newspaper editorials and of petitions, chanting and great political movements in the
streets. Elections were exciting, uproarious and sometimes enjoyable events which gave
a strong sense of belonging to the political community. Even when one could not vote
oneself, they helped to forge the political identity of people which was focused on the
participation in the nation (elections) and the emotional identification with certain
politicians (Peloso and Tenenbaum, 1996). This personalisation of politics affected
both conservative and liberal candidates, and while they differed greatly in their
philosophical approach and loathed each other wholeheartedly, they each sought to
court popular support in order to gain the sway of public opinion. This general opinion
in turn influenced those who were actually going to vote in the elections and it was
seldom that a popular politician did not succeed at the ballot box.
This was not citizenship, then, but it was an expression of political agency. While
the liberals sought to attract votes through appealing to new urban sectors and con
servatives through traditional bonds, both used on-the-spot bribery as well as corrup
tion and the sway of personal persuasion to attract common acclaim and political
support. As such, political relations were characterised more by client-ship than citizen
ship, especially given the high hurdle for inclusion into the polity. What little citizen
ship there was, was written on paper but barely existed elsewhere and was the preserve
of the emerging middle classes. The poor, women, indigenous and Afro-Latin American
people were systematically excluded from the polity (we should recall that slavery, the
antithesis of citizenship, was not abolished in Brazil until 1888), but the excitement of
Lucy Taylor
elections became a clamour for inclusion which would lead to experiments in citizen
ship and the reconfiguration of client-ship.
The era of clientelism was first really challenged at the turn of the twentieth century
with the development of workers' movements, feminist organisations and tenants'
associations in the major urban areas, as well as peasant and indigenous organisations
in the countryside, workers' groups in company-run plantations and mining towns, and
Black pride and rebellion movements in Central America and the Caribbean. The spirit
of organisation and revolution was widespread, influenced as it was by industrialisa
tion, urbanisation and the spread of new technology and ideas. The most high profile
entities were urban ones, created by ordinary people who found themselves crammed
into the factories, tenements and sprawling cities which began to grow rapidly from the
1880s onwards. Social and intellectual upheaval was prompted by migration from the
countryside and the arrival of new people and political ideas from Europe including
syndicalism, anarchism and communism (Maram, 1977; Thompson, 1981). New
political and social movements sprang up in this tumult which protested not only
against workplace injustice and poor wages, but also demanded cheaper food prices,
better housing and lower rents. While male-dominated labour unions were the most
common form, women were key protagonists in the rent strikes of Mexico and Buenos
Aires (Pineo etal., 1998) and where women were employed in large numbers, they
founded early unions and organised strikes (Wolfe, 1991). These were fledgling
political movements which reflected the reality of people's lives, complete with their
racial and gender components. Moreover they reflected the values of citizenship (rather
than client-ship) because these were independent organisations run by the poor them
selves, which asserted the right to a dignified life by calling on ideas of equal humanity,
and which demanded that they be taken seriously as equal political actors. These were
revolutionary times, and not only in class terms. The middle class feminist movement
emerged to challenge notions of patriarchal dominance, to push the boundaries of
women's work and to assert women's intelligence (Lavrin, 1995), and fascinating
currents such as the 'free love' movement in Argentine anarchism opened up debates
about sexuality, homosexuality and morality (Molyneux, 1986). Other protests chal
lenged the status quo too: Afro-Latins in Brazil and Cuba began to assert their identity
and culture, and to demand respect (Reid Andrews, 1989; P?rez Jr., 1986; Wade,
1997), whilst indigenous Latin Americans began to challenge racial dominance.
The effect of all this was highly destabilising of the conventional social order, and
aspects of it unnerved white, working class men as much as it did the rich. Quite
quickly, such movements were captured and controlled by new leaders, mostly drawn
from the elite and middle class, who steered activism in the 'appropriate' direction. A
few of these leaders were fascist, rather more headed-up socialist, communist and other
leftist parties, though the dominant format was the populist movement (Collier and
Collier, 1991). Despite substantial differences, each type of group pursued a very
similar strategy. Firstly, they focused on the organisation and mobilisation of urban
working class men, especially those in the capital. Secondly, they sidelined and/or
subjugated the activities of women and rural people to the workers' struggle (defining
ing them as primarily economic agents). Most parties (even some left wing ones) had
very conservative views of women's role which was focused on hearth-and-home, and
saw women as the repositories of national virtue and the moral foundation of men's
political struggles (Rosemblatt, 2000). The class analysis adopted by all these groups
served to make race 'invisible' and, therefore, to erase the presence of race-based
outrage and demands, as Afro-Latin men became union members and as indigenous
people became peasants. Thirdly, all three types of party - fascist, leftist, populist -
sought to 'improve' and 'civilise' the poor in ways which confirmed gender and racial
stereotypes, which promoted ideas of progress and appropriate (western) culture and
which portrayed their current behaviour as backward, dirty and degenerate. Thus
people were taught to read and write, they were told how to understand the world,
and they were given lessons on hygiene, sexual morality and the evils of alcohol
(Klaiber, 1975; McGee, 1984; Wilson, 2004; Zulawski, 2000). This combination was
strengthened by the strategic reconfiguration of race as indigenismo by middle class,
white intellectuals in Peru and Mexico (Mendoza, 1998; Knight, 1990). Despite its
often positive and celebratory tone, this capture, distortion and redefinition of culture
by intellectual outsiders was nevertheless an instrument of political manipulation
which denied foundational autonomy and agency to native peoples. Indeed, it was
part of making 'good citizens' by defining as 'good Indians' those who conformed to
the ideal and goals of national progress (Dawson, 1998).
However, the period 1930-1950 was also one of unprecedented popular participa
tion in politics and mostly democratic elections (which included women!) and it saw a
flowering of organisation amongst ordinary people. Was this citizenship in action?
Ideas about equality are confusing, especially on the left. On the one hand, leftist
leaders identified and denounced the exploitation of capitalism, challenged the injustice
of its inequality, and railed against an international system which perpetrated eco
nomic imperialism. Thus, they identified systematic economic inequalities and chal
lenged liberalism's myth of the level playing field. Yet, on the other hand, the leaders
saw themselves as the intellectual, if not moral, superiors of the impoverished and
untutored masses. It was they who had read Marx or Mari?tegui and their role as
vanguard was to instruct and prepare the workers for revolution (or government). In
this, leftist politicians of all sorts had much in common with their liberal counterparts a
100 years before: they regarded the lumpen proletariat as being politically ignorant and
ineffectual, precisely because they did not have the intellectual capacity to recognise
their own best interests. Leftists, therefore, began the process of challenging conven
tional ideas about inequality, but at the same time they justified their own superiority
on the basis of intellectual capacity, and perpetuated unequal relationships which
maintained gender, racial and class-based hierarchies (Taylor, 2006).
Still, much like the liberal crusades before, the dis juncture between rhetoric and
lived experience did not serve to cancel out people's desire to be treated equally and
with respect. Indeed, despite being exclusionary, narrow and increasingly dogmatic,
these parties brought a section of the poorer classes into formal, and then electoral,
politics through a culture of citizenship (albeit rather top-down), as opposed to client
ship. People were taught to scorn shoddy deals which sold their soul to el patron, to
question the empty rhetoric of the latter-day caudillos, and instead to take pride and
comfort in their independence and unity. Also, the drive for education gave people
conceptual tools to analyse their lives, it encouraged them to challenge injustice, and it
Lucy Taylor
inspired them to believe that a different world was possible. Moreover, when they came
into power, leftist and centrist parties championed the cause of the working class
through state intervention to raise wages, control prices of necessities and improve
employment conditions. They used the state to improve people's lives by building
houses, schools and hospitals as well as instituting old age pensions and other state
incomes for the needy. Despite its patchy coverage, the conceptualisation of such social
benefits as rights marked a sea change in the role of the state (redistribution and
intervention to equalise political, social and economic conditions) and expanded the
concept of citizen to include not only a formal legal and political identity but also a
social persona which is embedded in society and subject to the distortions of human
existence.
Despite this, though, client-ship was undoubtedly the dominant force in Latin
American politics for much of the twentieth century via patronage populism. Large
swathes of the poor were caught in the whirlwind of charismatic promises, the thrill of
a glorious political identity and the rapidly expanding state which seemed, at last, to be
on their side. Populist politicians spoke of their problems and needs, they praised
workers' role in society and they took their politics seriously by enfranchising them
and bringing them into the heart of the nation (James, 1988; Levine, 1998). Presidents
such as Per?n and Vargas drew people into their patronage networks with the promise
of favours - nice easy jobs for loyal supporters in the big new municipal offices, or a
holiday complex might be built for an especially supportive trade union. Indeed, client
ship adapted very well to inclusionary party-politics through its vast party machine
anchored in the poor barrios and trade unions, and lit by the shining light of a visionary
leader. Such parties were embedded in social networks which saw party offices spring
up in every barrio to become the meeting hall for mothers and toddlers groups, old
folk's afternoon clubs, football teams and regular neighbourhood fiestas (James, 1988).
Clientelism not only bought support by solving individual or particular problems
through the party, it also built support in general terms by massive public investment
in social security, housing, healthcare, etc. as well as promoting higher wages and
improving working and living conditions through legislation. However, though such
schemes were very similar to those promoted by 'citizenship-based' parties, the under
lying concept was not one of welfare rights but social justice. That is, benefits accrued
to people because harsh living conditions were deemed to be unacceptable by the
incumbent government, not because people had a right to a minimum standard of
existence separate from the goodwill of the president. In this way, the state provision of
pensions was a form of mass patronage organised through the state which hoped to
create mass gratitude and support.
Both of the major politico-social systems of the post-war era - class-party rivalry
and populism - were founded on inequality. The populist regimes attempted to include
the working class and women, and embarked on programmes which would genuinely
improve people's lives. However, there was never any question of sharing power with
the poor on an equal footing, given the great leader's superhuman qualities and his
status as 'saviour of the nation'. Instead, there was an open and happy acknowledg
ment of inequality, albeit coupled with a desire to right the wrongs of social injustice.
The radical democratic and leftist parties presented a rhetoric of equal potential worth,
but this belied a reality of male, mestizo/white and largely middle class dominance. The
grand new revolutionary worlds advocated by the left were founded on a set of
assumptions steeped in the 'old' prejudices which saw 'peasants' as backward, which
saw women as stupid and less important, which was suspicious of Afro-Latins and
which believed that other struggles must be subjugated to the greatest struggle of all -
the proletariat-led class war.
Challenging Citizenship and Continuing Client-ship
These issues have been re-tackled, though, and a series of autonomous organisations
have once again surfaced to rediscover and debate inequality, struggle and citizenship.
The social movements which grew up during the dictatorships sought to defend and
sustain the lives of ordinary people (such as human rights or shanty-town
organisations), and to rethink the foundations of political struggle (feminist, indigen
ous, Afro-Latin, homosexual groups) in intertwining movements (Escobar and Alvarez,
1992; Jelin, 1990). Their significance lies in the way that they have caused some
ordinary people (but not all) to reflect on their own capacity to organise and change
the world themselves and, therefore, to question both the rhetoric of equality emanat
ing from parties (especially those of the left) and the supposedly superhuman capacity
of god-like populists.
Two types of social movement have undermined client-ship and promoted citizen
ship by reconfiguring ideas about the place of the person in society, both by promoting
the agency of the individual and by questioning the nature of the political community.
The first is the human rights movement, the soul of which resides in the identities and
personalities of the victims of human rights abuse, and it is their names and photo
graphs which most forcefully link the immorality of such abuses to the political
campaigns for truth and justice (Schirmer, 1989). The movements' force lies in pointing
out that people are not abstract ideals or policy choices, but flesh and blood individ
uals. As such, it is both a celebration and a vindication of individualism because it
says that people matter, and that they matter more than the state or the 'glorious
nation' in whose name they were repressed. The second sort of movement helps to
uncover diversity and difference in the human condition, and here we think particularly
of women's movements, indigenous or Afro-Latin movements, and gay and lesbian
movements (Alvarez etal., 1998). Obviously, they are very different from one another,
but they share the desire to deny the uniformity of human experience, to reject
categorisation in terms of social class and to reveal the particularity of people's lives.
Moreover, they have challenged dominant explanations of inequality by revealing the
historical and cultural roots of deep-seated prejudice, and they have shown how the
structures of state, power and economy reflect the needs and practices of the dominant
elements in society, rather than the subaltern. As such, radical social movements have
challenged both liberal citizenship and traditional vanguard politics at a very profound
level. Women's movements have revealed that conventional citizenship (and indeed
class solidarity) is about equality between men, and that gender-blindness works out as
gender exclusion. The indigenous movement has similarly unveiled the 'whiteness' of
Lucy Taylor
such categories, but it has also shaken the foundations of the Latin American state by
revealing the violation, domination and racism not only of colonisation, but also the
supposedly redemptive liberation of 'nations'. Further, these perspectives are challen
ging ideas like 'community', 'law', 'representation' and, therefore, 'citizenship' in ways
which eat away at heart of the polity as it was configured in the early nineteenth
century and developed in the twentieth (Van Cott, 2000; Yashar, 1998).
Despite such critiques, many people in many ways are becoming more like citizens.
They are more certain of their value as individuals in relation to others who are richer
and more powerful, and they are better aware of their rights (because the struggle for
democracy and the practice of d?mocratisation has made them so) (Taylor, 2003).
They are more likely to think in terms of rights, both because international organ
isations are promoting a discourse of rights, and because neo-liberalism sees the
recourse to rights as being the chief protection mechanism for sovereign consumers.
The biggest growth area in social organisation is consumer groups (closely followed by
neighbourhood improvement schemes) and NGOs flourish in the privatised world of
social policy (Jelin and Herschberg, 1996). Yet this trend towards a strengthening
of citizenship has not resulted in the Latin American democracies, states and citizens
becoming deeper, more coherent or more equal. Indeed, the key trend of the last
10 years has been the resurgence of populism and the return of the familiar political
messiah. This seems to present a conundrum - how can people feel more like citizens
but act more like clients?
Having considered the nature of the relationship between political leader and
people, three key reasons why citizenship is failing strike me. Firstly, neo-liberalism
has changed both abstract thinking and government policies regarding poverty. The
concept of 'privatisation' is central to neo-liberal citizenship, whereby power (and
indeed freedom) is equated with personal, individualised agency articulated through pri
vate, social and voluntary interactions (with friends, neighbours, charities for example)
or through legal or economic transactions (exercising one's civil rights or buying
and selling in the market). Privatisation is a policy which seeks to shift tasks and power
from the realm of the state into the 'private' realm of individual and market. Within
this schema, both populist social justice and citizenship welfare rights are dismissed by
the neo-liberal philosophy because their deliberate redistribution of wealth punishes
those who (by dint of their talents) have accumulated wealth, as well as interfering with
market forces. Social justice is misguided because it is determined by political con
siderations, not the market, and welfare rights are judged to be not rights at all because
they require purposeful intervention, unlike negative rights (civil and political) which
merely establish mechanisms. Of course, pure neo-liberalism has not been enacted in
Latin America, but the consequences of freeing market forces and cutting public
services have been impoverishment, unemployment, worse social indicators
(malnutrition, infant deaths, disease) and insecurity. In tune with privatisation,
NGOs - by definition private entities - have stepped into the social service breech
but their assistance is based on specific projects which cover a certain time and place
(Gideon, 1998). They do not contemplate universal coverage nor is their continuation
guaranteed and so in no sense do they sustain social rights, despite their genuine
commitment to improving people's lives. Citizenship has changed dramatically, then,
because it has lost welfare rights, a key component which sought to redress inequalities
in the exercise of civil and political rights. With impoverishment and without welfare
rights, people's capacity to exercise their remaining rights has therefore been severely
curbed.
Secondly, while it is undoubtedly preferable to operate under conditions of liberal
democracy, the liberal historicist understanding of inequality, with its blindness to
structures of discrimination and disdain, has been heightened by its more extreme
characterisation as neo-liberalism. Public discourse sustains the myth of equal rights
through recourse to privatisation which places responsiblity for social and class
inequalities in the hands of the individual, in the private, social sphere and outside
the realm of politics. Yet the 'level playing field' which exists on paper is distorted by
the very uneven terrain of familiar assumptions about civilisation and degeneracy,
about progress and backwardness, about rationality and perception, and about who
should follow whom, who should adopt whose lifestyles, who is right and who must
learn. The fact that this heightened inequality is part of lived experience also means
that the sham of equal citizenship is similarly blatant and it makes a constant mockery
of democratic ideals.
Thirdly, the primary vehicles of democratic political participation - parties - persist
in maintaining intellectual hierarchies of disdain, whether they reflect biological or
historicist explanations of inequality (Taylor, 2003). They continue to act as vanguards
even though people have largely ceased to follow them and to take themselves, rather
than citizens, very seriously. Parties generally discourage the kind of active participa
tion which they achieved in the past by simultaneously misinterpreting, over-ruling and
underestimating their potential supporters. There are some notable exceptions, includ
ing the Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil and the Partido por la Democracia in Chile,
both of which have strong links to civil society and were formed during, not before, the
transitions to democracy. Yet more generally, parties are no longer the sole means of
political communication and action, and those people in society who wish to change
the world or think new thoughts now join social organisations instead which often lead
public debate and leave the parties to play catch-up behind. This leaves parties both
outmoded and without the kind of internal dissent which challenges policy and holds
dominant factions to account, which in turn undermines pluralism within these central
agencies of democratic life. The paradox is that despite their decreasing relevance to
people's lives and their lack of representativity, they continue to hold power in
government and actually continue to wield immense power, despite globalisation.
This presents a crisis of political citizenship because the official channels are both
unresponsive and mistrusted, whilst the channels of civil society are ultimately very
limited in their capacity to change macro-political projects such as structural adjust
ment or social policy.
One of the other reasons why conventional citizenship politics is in crisis is because
such parties do not guarantee anything in return for the people's vote - client-ship on
the other hand, offers a great deal more and this perhaps explains why neo-populism
has proved to be popular (for a time and in certain places). In particular, it proffers two
comforts (familiarity and the hope of tangible improvement in one's personal life) and
one bonus (the possible pleasure of exercising a little power). Client-ship is one of the
Lucy Taylor
familiar pathways of Latin American political culture. It locks into a sense of belonging
and identity which reaches deep into the struggles of daily life; it is about personalities
and families, favours and favourites, admiration, emotion and a business deal (Auyero,
2001). As such, it treats people seriously and touches people's emotional and material
lives more closely and effectively than a more distanced, citizenship-style politics does.
Secondly, support for a patronage-style party via its local representative increases the
chance that some small improvement will occur in people's lives - this, after all, is the
nature of the political relationship which couples charisma with the votes-for-goods
deal. Indeed, the poverty of structural adjustment and collapse of state services makes
this mechanism even more vital as people seek protection in the 'private' world of
NGOs, churches and political patronage (Gideon, 1998; Auyero, 2001). A party that
does not operate patronage, in contrast, can more easily ignore its individual constitu
ents because it gives no personal guarantees to citizens who have serious needs. Finally,
just like citizenship, client-ship also appeals to people's desire for agency because it
encourages and even demands participation in the circus of mobilisations and fiestas
that accompany elections. People recognise the limitations of the performance but they
enjoy exercising their limited power and look forward to the possible rewards which
this political 'work' might yield (Lazar, 2003). Political work in citizen-style politics is
equally exciting, of course, but given that people are short on time and very short on
money, only the most dedicated militantes will turn out to wave a flag in the plaza 'for
nothing'.
We should not rejoice in the flourishing of patronage politics and client-ship,
though. Neo-populism is, of course, characterised by autocracy, corruption and vio
lence. It cares little for the plight of the poor, merely throwing them scraps of hope -
children's milk, subsidised seeds, a clinic here, some school chairs there. It tramples
over rights, ignores representation and makes arbitrary decisions, and it allows
favoured cronies to become very rich by privatising and syphoning off what little the
impoverished state has (O'Donnell, 1994). Neo-populism and its attendant client-ship
is not a solution to problems of representation, participation and accountability, but
for many people it appears to be a better short term strategy than voting for a
'conventional' politician who seems neither to understand nor to respect them but
who performs a disingenuous pantomime six months before the election.
Unless and until citizenship can provide meaningful participation it will continue to
be over-shadowed by client-ship, because the fact that inequality is built-into the
patron/client relationship matters little in a social world where the equality of citizen
ship is a laughable myth. For me, it is the characterisation of inequality which holds the
key to understanding social and political relationships, and the failure of citizenship in
Latin America today. Central to this is the persistence of hierarchies which are
explained in 'historical' stories about inequality which ignore race or gender, and
sometimes ignore class. Intimately linked with this is the enduring fallacy that trans
lates intellectual capacity and privilege into moral and civilisational superiority.
Political parties have been the central machine which has driven the reproduction of
hierarchies of disdain through their structures, programmes and actions. While these
hierarchies are being challenged by diverse groups and elements in civil society outside
the machinery of power, such idea-structures need to be challenged, dismantled and
reconstructed from within if change is going to be effective. This requires parties to

react to pressure from society, to question their own assumptions and to take citizens
seriously. As it is, we should not be surprised that neo-populism polls better than
conventional options because it is working at a distinct advantage. Inequality is a main
stay of client-ship in the same way that it is a central pillar of capitalism and far from
jeopardising patronage politics, it is its essence. So long as relationships remain grossly
unequal, then clientelist practices will have the upper hand because they make sense.
Non-patronage parties cannot compete whilst they maintain the historicist approach
built on a liberal blindness to systematic discrimination which obliges them to feign
egalitarianism whilst openly practising hypocrisy, and they should not be surprised that
citizens don't trust them. Parties which operate relations of client-ship have two great
assets - the charisma of their leader and their practice of purchasing political support.
While non-patronage parties can also nurture great rhetoricians, they cannot buy votes
without compromising their political identity, and this again puts them at a disadvan
tage. The great trump card that such parties do have, though, is citizens themselves. If
people are increasingly aware of their rights and conscious of an identity as 'citizen',
might this offer an opportunity for parties to found a new platform of legitimacy based
on more meaningful social and political equality? This is certainly a possibility and one
which acounts for the success of the Partido dos Trabalhadores in Brazil, a develop
ment which signals the viability of an option based on meaningful participation and a
concept of citizenship which recognises race, class and gender as dimensions of power.
Yet most parties have patently failed to react to changes in the political landscape
(going on now since the early 1980s) and continue to patronise, disrespect and ignore
citizens. This leads me to conclude that if there is a crisis of democracy, it lies at the feet
of the non-patronage political class which has failed to take people seriously as citizens
and which continues to practice assumptions of profound prejudice rooted in conquest,
patriarchy and the founding notions of the Latin American state.
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Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

Client-Ship and Citizenship in Latin America

Client-ship and Citizenship in Latin

This article explores the development of political relationships between

Keywords: clientelism, citizenship, history, participation, patronage,

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and it is not mediated by procedures or rules but by social custom, expectations,

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2002). The liberal-historicist explanation pays attention to the surface structures of

The Struggle for Political Agency

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Challenging Citizenship and Continuing Client-ship

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reconstructed from within if change is going to be effective. This requires parties to

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