The story goes that the Italian Christian Democratic Party had a very elaborate system of patronage and vote-buying. It devised innovative methods to ensure that people voted as per promise at the hustings. For example, a voter was given a left shoe prior to elections with clear directions on how to vote and who to vote for. If the voter kept his promise and adhered to the agreement, he/she got the right shoe. Is it not a novel method of employing patronage and vote-buying since one shoe was useless for the voter as well as the party?
This modus operandi of buying votes is a crude example of playing dirty in electoral politics and shows how entrenched political patronage is. The culture of patronage, however, runs much deeper in developing countries like Pakistan and explains the fragile nature of democracy.
This culture is opposed to the very concept of genuine and representative democracy. It negates the rule of law, kills meritocracy and is opposed to inclusive political and economic development, which are the basic pillars of real democracy. It breeds opportunities of rent seeking, corruption and thus weakens accountability.
What are the sources of patronage in Pakistan? The first source is highly skewed land distribution. Land is a source of political control, especially in rural politics. Historically, land has remained a major source of political power even in countries like the UK during the initial phase of democracy. The peasants and land occupiers were controlled by land proprietors. But democracy was strengthened in the UK due to political and electoral reforms introduced to avert threats of revolution.
In Pakistan, the concentration of land in the hands of the feudal elite not only empowers them economically but also helps deepen the culture of patronage in rural areas. It establishes a patron-client relationship between the landlord and the landless. People are not free in the real sense to cast their votes according to their preferences. It is the landlord who determines political choices for them, despite the so-called secret ballot system.
David Ricardo, the classical economist, once said “It is the cruellest mockery to tell a man he may vote for ‘A’ or ‘B’, when you know that he is so much under the influence of person ‘A’, or the friends of ‘A’, that his voting for person ‘B’ would be attended with the destruction of him. It is not he who has the vote, really and substantially, but his landlord, for it is for his benefit and interest that it is exercised in the present system.”
Empirical evidence also suggests that if the majority of people are under the influence of the landlord in a patron-client relationship, elections do not reflect the true preferences of the people. For example, Professor Jean-Marie Baland and Professor James A Robinson in their paper titled ‘Land and power: Theory and evidence from Chile’ have examined the effect of the introduction of secret ballot in Chile in 1958.
According to them, due to pervasive patron-client relationships and the influence of landlords, localities tended to show much stronger support for right wing parties before the introduction of reforms as the landed oligarchy supported these traditional parties. However, after the introduction of the secret ballot such support vanished. True, secret ballot is an important electoral reform that helps determine the true preferences of the electorate. But the question is: does the introduction of secret ballot make much difference if the pattern of patron-client relationship is not changed?
Undeniably, without doing away with patronage structures and machines, the ideal of real democracy cannot be achieved. This means that land reforms should not be considered a dead issue in Pakistan, as it is only through meaningful land reforms that the political control of landlords can be reduced.
Provision of jobs in the public sector is another source that fosters patronage in Pakistan. It can be argued that vote-buying can be done at a smaller scale. After all, how many pairs of shoes can you distribute in exchange for votes? But the fact of the matter is that the patronage system can work even at the grand level. Providing a job to one family member means that the whole extended family will vote in return. Loyalties of a local landlord or village head can be purchased by providing a job to his incompetent child in the police, customs or revenue departments.
It is an open secret that jobs were doled out by political parties in the past to win loyalties and votes. Customs, police and provincial revenue departments were the most sought after jobs due to obvious reasons. Tehsildars, police inspectors, customs inspectors, and customs appraisers were inducted on political considerations.
The result is the mess, corruption and incompetence that we are now witnessing at a massive scale in these departments. Recruitment of a person without consideration of merit means that he will remain a burden on the institution till his retirement. So the implication is: reduce dependence on public sector jobs for employment to weaken patronage culture.
No job, no matter how petty it may be, should be given under the patronage system. Recruitments should be made in a transparent manner through public service commissions manned by persons of known integrity and competence. This principle should also apply to promotions and placements of the public sector employees.
Besides, adherence to meritocracy in public sector recruitments and reducing dependence on government employment is also important. It will help dilute patronage. A development strategy, encouraging establishment of factories and industries and focus on promotion of rural non-farm economy will help weaken patronage.
The literature on patronage shows that poverty and powerlessness provide a breeding ground for growth of patronage culture. Professor Avinash Dixit and John Londregan, while discussing the behaviour of the swing voter, in their paper titled ‘The determinants of success of special interests in redistributive politics’, have pointed out that low-income groups whose marginal utility of income is higher, will be more prone to patronage. Thus widespread poverty is one of the major factors responsible for perpetuation of patronage culture in Pakistan.
The perpetuation of the culture of clientelism is possible due to weak institutional constraints upon the behaviour of predatory elite. The electoral politics of Pakistan revolves around a few dozen families. The lack of political competition constrains their accountability through electoral process as the costs of entry into politics are prohibitively high.
Another related problem is the electoral process itself, wherein even a candidate getting less than majority votes can turn out to be victorious in the elections. Such a process has far-reaching implications. If you can succeed in elections with minority votes, then your focus will not necessarily be on the provision of public goods. Instead, you will have incentive to cultivate personal votes by extending patronage. So changing electoral rules such as imposing the condition of getting minimum 50 percent registered votes in a constituency to be declared electorally successful and the introduction of compulsory voting may help reduce the grip of patronage.
There is a consensus among the people that the system is failing us. However, we are still unable to translate this consensus into some concrete action for bringing in meaningful changes in the system. At the heart of our woes is the patronage culture, which is a big impediment to change. Unless conscious efforts are made to eliminate patronage, the system will continue to fail us.
The writer is a graduate from Columbia University. Email: jamilnasir1969@gmail. com
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