Votes for Survival: Relational Clientelism in Latin America is an extraordinary piece of scholarship. In this major theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of clientelism’s persistence and evolution in the modern world, author Simeon Nichter understands the contingent exchange of material benefits for political support in terms of long-term relationships, rather than as one-off transactions that take place mainly around campaigns and elections. Departing from the conventional depiction of citizens (clients) as passive recipients of handouts delivered by political elites who target them for votes, Nichter portrays them as agents who demand benefits from politicians to whom they signal their support and from whom they secure commitments. By emphasizing the repeated nature of citizen–politician exchanges and assigning considerable importance to the demand side, Votes for Survival turns much of the recent literature on clientelism on its head.
The book opens by asking why clientelism, conceived by most recent political science literature in terms of contingent transactions made around election periods, persists in the face of four common contemporary challenges: rising incomes via economic development and social policy transfers, ballot secrecy resulting from institutional reforms, the prohibition and punishment of vote buying through the spread of legal reforms, and partisan strategies that focus more on programs than on patronage. Brazil, specifically the Northeast Region, presents an ideal context for trying to grapple with this puzzle. Despite these four trends, a more subtle and ongoing form of clientelism remains resilient there, as strongly suggested by evidence that Nichter provides.
Votes for Survival’s point of departure is that citizens remain vulnerable despite rising incomes. This is because of employment uncertainty (leading to income volatility), unexpected illness and disease in conjunction with remaining gaps in health care, and the periodic droughts that have long plagued the Northeast Region of Brazil. Yet what Nichter calls electoral clientelism—whereby elites with a monopolistic grip on resources hand out discretionary benefits in exchange for votes in elections that do not assure ballot secrecy—no longer holds. Politics has become more competitive and conduct around elections far more subject to legal scrutiny. Voters have gained political autonomy despite the endurance of material vulnerabilities that cause them to seek out particularistic assistance.
Yet relational clientelism is resilient to the four trends that have eroded electoral clientelism. This new type of citizen–politician connection that Nichter observes and analyzes addresses the persistent vulnerabilities that afflict voters while avoiding the legal restrictions that electoral clientelism has confronted in recent years. The successful operation of this less overtly transactional linkage depends on how well citizens and politicians manage to alleviate a dual credibility problem. How can politicians know that given citizens will vote for them, and how can citizens be confident that given politicians will protect them from adversity if they do so? According to Nichter, voters themselves can go to great lengths to mitigate this credibility problem through two mechanisms: declaring their support and requesting benefits. Actions like putting up campaign banners on their homes and wearing T-shirts that declare support for specific candidates (actions that have obvious costs because they simultaneously suggest a lack of support for others) signal the credibility of citizens’ vote promises. Requesting benefits allows citizens to screen out unresponsive politicians and test the trustworthiness of others to stand by them when adversity strikes. These two mechanisms at the core of relational clientelism— declaring support and requesting benefits— place initiative and purpose with voters.
After decades of scholarship that focused narrowly on vote buying and emphasized the strategic and powerful role of patrons, Votes for Survival comes as a refreshing and illuminating corrective. By focusing on the agency of citizens (the demand side), Nichter spins out a logic that helps explain not only how clientelism persists despite an inability to monitor votes but also why so many politicians continue to attend to their core supporters rather than invest more heavily in potential swing voters, whose intentions remain unknown. His analysis also helps explain why so many benefits are delivered outside of electoral periods and are as tailored as they are to the (expressed) needs of citizens.
Nichter’s innovative scholarship grew out of the extensive fieldwork that he carried out for his doctoral dissertation. Votes for Survival stands as a powerful testament to the merits of deep immersion. Eighteen months of qualitative fieldwork and two original surveys form a rich foundation for understanding the dynamics of exchange relations in Northeast Brazil. At a time when doctoral students tend to spend ever less time in the countries they study, Votes for Survival serves as a powerful reminder of the potential for fieldwork both to generate and test ideas. Nichter’s quantitative and modeling abilities complement his ethnographic talents. Formalizing the analysis will facilitate its generalization. In a world where adversity persists but traditional clientelism faces restrictions, some of Nichter’s observations will surely travel, as his comparative section also indicates.
Although it is exceedingly well done, Votes for Survival could nevertheless have gone further in clarifying or emphasizing certain issues. For example, the enduring nature of the citizen–politician ties that it depicts may at first glance seem consistent with anthropological accounts that take norms of reciprocity seriously. Yet make no mistake: Nichter’s analysis is about the instrumental calculations that actors make to advance their survival, not their feelings of obligation. When acknowledging works that emphasize norms, Nichter stops short of unequivocally demarcating where his rationalist analysis diverges.
Readers may also be left wondering about the scale on which the mechanisms of relational clientelism can operate. Although the size of the municipalities where Nichter conducted his research varies, it is reasonable to wonder how the core mechanisms of relational clientelism—declaring support and requesting benefits—would operate viably in major urban contexts. Networks of operatives may facilitate the monitoring of citizen displays of support for given politicians, but the limits of this system should at least be considered.
Drought is the specific climatic condition associated with contingent exchanges in Northeast Brazil, yet global climate change is creating weather-related shocks and disasters of various kinds throughout the world. Those afflicted in developing societies will no doubt seek relief partly in contingent exchanges. Recognizing this more frontally would only strengthen the book by showing its broader contemporary relevance.
Notwithstanding these minor points, Votes for Survival makes a crucial contribution to understanding the continuities and changes that characterize citizen–politician exchange relationships in modernizing contexts. The intriguing puzzle that Nichter poses at the outset, his insightful and well-corroborated analysis, and the wide-ranging research methods he leverages make for an exceptionally compelling study. Votes for Survival promises to reshape how scholars think about contemporary clientelism in Latin America and beyond.
