It was a remarkable neo-liberal accomplishment to create a 500 million person market without internal borders and other impediments to the free circulation of goods, capitals, services, and persons where twenty-eight different national markets separated by tariff and nontariff barriers, different regulatory regimes, and different currencies once existed. Whether it is to be understood as an embodiment of global forces or, rather, as an attempt to stop them at Europe's gates, the creation of the Single European Market (SEM) is certainly inspired by neo-liberal principles (Hooghe and Marks 1997). Tremendous pressure is exerted on these countries’ economies and societies by intensified economic competition and common social trends, such as the lengthening of life expectancy, the aging of the native population, and the massive inflow of immigrants. We would rightly expect workers and employers, public administrators and common citizens of EU countries to react by redefining their interests, adopting novel mobilization strategies, and experimenting with new organizational forms.

In a globalized world, not only firms and economic groups compete but also entire regulatory systems such as states, regions, and cities (Cox 1997). Economic and social interests can be aggregated at various levels, depending on where the effects of policy decisions are most felt. The nation-state no longer serves as sole referent of interest politics. Interests are organized and identities forged also at the subnational level (Keating 1998). Political mobilization may take place locally but reach much farther by connecting with other localities and groups through transnational networks (Keck and Sikkink 1997). Which interest definition and which mobilization strategy will succeed is often adjudicated by international and supranational institutions. Consequently, the epistemological and empirical focus of our inquiries can no longer be solely the nation-state.

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.

Clientelism as Strategy

Political clientelism and patronage are widely diffused phenomena spanning across time and space and touching virtually all political systems in which votes count for something. In Europe, political clientelism and patronage are commonly considered as phenomena typical of only some countries, normally the Latin or Mediterranean countries. The ascription of clientelism and patronage to given geographical areas goes hand in hand with their attribution to the cultural traits that supposedly uniquely characterize these countries, such as familism, tribalism, clannism, “orientalism.” Political clientelism and patronage are, thus, generally understood as cultural phenomena: as the reflection onto the political sphere of a generalized way of conceiving interpersonal relations, particularly those between the powerful and the powerless. Alternatively, they are blamed on the distorted or incomplete development of given political systems. According to this second view, lasting marks were impressed early on onto the system of political representation of these countries – an imprint which even today affects the way in which interests are represented and promoted in these polities. For both the culturalist and the developmentalist approach, then, clientelism and patronage are structural features of given polities, which therefore explains their resilience even in the face of momentous social and political transformations.

This book, rather, starts from the assumption that clientelism and patronage are strategies for the acquisition, maintenance, and aggrandizement of political power, on the part of the patrons, and strategies for the protection and promotion of their interests, on the part of the clients, and that their deployment is driven by given sets of incentives and disincentives.

Particularistic Politics

Real democracies, as opposed to idealized ones, do not operate only on the basis of categorical interests represented through territorially elected representatives and through functionally selected spokespersons. The interests which are worthy of being represented and supported are not necessarily only those broad enough to claim to represent “the general interest” of society or to be harmonized, with other equally broad interests, to yield “the general interest” (see, e.g., Pizzorno 1981: 255).

Citizens often do not ask from their representatives the elaboration and implementation of political programs for the improvement of the whole society, but rather quite specific policies for the improvement of their personal lot. Workers and other categorical interests often do not ask of their associations the protection and promotion of their broad functional interests, but rather immediate advantages for their fairly narrow categories. Religious, ethnic, and language groups often do not fight for religiously tolerant, multiethnic, and multilingual societies, but for the defense of their own religious, ethnic, and language traditions. Single-issue movements may not care about the wider repercussions of the policies they favor but about the advancement of their (sometimes narrowly defined) interests. While particular interests may be more effectively promoted if couched in universalistic terms – as furthering the welfare of the whole society or as redressing the faulty implementation of universal rights – often they are simply promoted for their own sake, without much concern for competing interests or for the society-wide consequences that their promotion may engender.