Prof. Eva Wegner from Philipps University Marburg was a guest at the Jour Fixe event format of the Collaborative Research Centre "Global Dynamics of Social Policy". On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, she gave a lecture entitled "The Citizen Side of Clientelism". Following the exciting presentation of current research findings, these were discussed with numerous CRC members and other university members from other institutions.
Abstract:
Our project explores clientelism from the perspective of citizens, rather than political elites, highlighting how individuals experience and navigate these exchanges. Drawing on ethnographic accounts, we develop an inductive typology that distinguishes three types of clientelism: vote buying, relational, and collective. These types differ in what is exchanged—money, services, jobs, infrastructure—and in the nature of the relationships involved. We develop a two-dimensional framework. One dimension distinguishes between individual and collective benefits; the other captures the nature of citizen–patron ties, ranging from distant and instrumental to close and hierarchical. This structure helps explain both the diversity of clientelist forms and the underlying demand for them. Drawing on original survey data from South Africa and Tunisia, we show that attitudes and beliefs over trade-offs along these dimensions help explain demand for the different types of clientelism. By centering citizen agency, the study offers a more nuanced understanding of how clientelism persists in different forms and adapts in democratic settings.
Eva Wegner is a Professor of Comparative Politics at Philipps‑University Marburg. She earned her PhD in Social and Political Science from the European University Institute in Florence, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Cape Town and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. Before joining the University of Marburg, she was an Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin. Her research focuses on political behavior, distributive politics, and accountability with a regional emphasis on the Middle East and Sub‑Saharan Africa. Her work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, and Electoral Studies, among others.
Contact:
Dr. Roy Karadag
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Institute for Intercultural and International Studies
Mary-Somerville-Straße 7
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-67468
E-Mail: karadag@uni-bremen.de
