At a time when the transformation of the European political space profoundly affects the way in which interests are democratically represented, it might be useful to revisit a political phenomenon – clientelism – that has been mostly studied as a corruption of representation rather than one of its legitimate forms. Because it provides preferential access to stateadministered jobs, services, and decisions through small groups of insiders, upon which the influence of strategically positioned bureaucrats and political leaders is strong, clientelism is frequently mentioned as an apt description of some of the mechanisms at work also within the European Union. And because clientelist exchanges occur between restricted groups and individuals, on the one hand, and individual bureaucrats and representatives, on the other, clientelism captures that element of personalism which characterizes the demand and supply of representation in today's Europe. Once considered a marginal phenomenon, clientelism may again become salient.

This book traces the roots of clientelism in the period in which democratic representation was introduced and perfected in most European countries – a period occupying approximately two centuries, from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. The relative timing of the extension of the franchise, the social composition of the active and passive electorate, the general structure of society at the time of mass political mobilization, and, not least, the structure of the state, in particular of the public administration, are the key dynamics that explain the character of democratic representation, in general, and the space, if any, occupied by clientelism within it.