We hate our politicians but we are no different. A friend of a friend knows a friend and he or she takes care of you getting a job as a janitor. This is where the clientelism starts.
Not only job opportunities, promotions, and stealing from public resources, but the whole political system is based on patron-client relationships.
Enormously complex patron-client relationships exist in every political system on the planet. Individuals that are in office are clients of the super-rich patrons.
The super-rich use lobbyists, but movers-and-shakers or crooks that are connected to the politician block their efforts.
Influential individuals who create party wings according to beliefs or the current political climate with the influence of secret services and lodges can never create a perfect democracy.
This is what the Iron law of oligarchy says: you have a perfect democracy, and then clientelism changes it all. And you were wondering why it is impossible to achieve anything in politics.
Academia is also no different from politics. A lot of people wrote about the possibility (I wrote this in a way they cannot sue me) of clientelism in the awarding of Nobel Prizes. The scientists create complex influence cliques that are selective (for example by prestige, the kind of specific research).
And they use any form of leverage to gain political points in the given power. constellation. There is a patron and a client.
History of clientelism
Clientelism had started in the hunter-gatherer groups when someone had served someone (even though this phenomenon is more prevalent in modern societies). Then we skip to Ancient Rome when protection, favors, and assistance happened to less powerful individuals (clients) in exchange for loyalty, support, and services. Do you think the Olympic games were not rigged even back then? You are a naive individual.
Not only sports rigging is persistent nowadays but it applies to every single (sic!) sport that people practice. This is why I put a smile when seeing people cheering for some team.
During the Middle Ages in Europe and other parts of the world, feudal systems often relied on personal relationships between lords and vassals. Lords would provide land, protection, and resources to vassals in exchange for military service, labor, and loyalty.
Accusations and the proper connections
FIFA Ballon d’Or, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Grammy Awards, Academy Awards. I am not insinuating there is any kind of clientelism. I will leave my intelligent readers to make the decision themselves.
To achieve something, you must have the proper connections. The miraculous startups are ridden with clientelism from the start to the end. Do you really think that someone would put this crucial and sensitive information into the hands of unreliable people?
And here we are again! Do you think the USA is not ridden with clientelism? Do you think the super-rich families and big banks don’t have the proper connections to the FBI, CIA, attorneys, judges, not to mention politicians. And when the system works, suddenly suspicious deaths happen.
Also, there are international clientelist groups that may change political decisions in a country they don’t even speak the language of.
I am not saying that personality traits such as ambitiousness, IQ, talents, creativity, and resilient personality are not useful. Actually, they are crucial as well, but clientelism is something you sometimes need the most.
When the media tell you someone is “influential”, raise your awareness. The kind of person engages in some patron-client relationship.
The top clientelist relationships (politics) are the most immoral. And immorality wins. You cannot do it (in the current state of affairs with feeble-minded citizens) and serve 1000 different client networks that block each other.
Dirty corruption and corporate corruption
The methods of measuring dirty corruption are quite objective and meaningful. And gross corruption poses a huge problem to countries’ development. But how come they do measure only gross corruption when there is enormously strong corporate corruption? And clientelism is underlying all of this.
Since international corporations have enormous influence (unlike the crooks stealing public funds), no such corruption is measured.
Conclusion of clientelism
So next time you do something clientelistic immorally (bribe a doctor, graft, nepotism), recollect our beloved politicians and how they have to direct hundreds of clientelist cliques that all want access to power. We should be active citizens, forget newspaper infotainment, and have real responsible media without clientelist powers behind them.
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