LIST OF PANELS

In the 1960s, Theodore J. Lowi put forward to the scientific community clientelism as a prospective feature of public policies. He elaborated a typology of public policies according to the criteria of the coercion spread by the state actors. In his classification, he identified the distributive policies in particular, which are based on the individual allocation of resources. According to T. J. Lowi, processes of patronage can organise these distributive policies, when policies are governed by hierarchical relationships of dependence between the policy-makers and the policy-clients (Lowi, 1964: 690).

Thus, T. J. Lowi advocated that distributive policies could sometimes produce personal and asymmetrical relations between the policy-makers and the policy-clients because of the unequal resources and political interests. From this result, we suggest linking T. J. Lowi’s proposition with the theoretical concept of political clientelism. Clientelism is a relationship of personal dependence, which is based on a reciprocal exchange of favours between a patron and a client who control unequal resources (Médard, 1976; Briquet, Sawicki, 1998). Clientelism is mainly appreciated as a political strategy characterized by giving material goods in return for electoral support. But it is above all a political network and organizational structure which involve intermediaries and brokers, whose roles are to mobilize and strengthen the political network in exchange for material and non-material goods.

The original focus of this panel is to analyse how, sometimes, the process of public policy can be confused with political clientelism. We suggest that the policy analysis has to consider seriously the relations between policies and clientelism. The scientific literature is yet crossed by a scientific division, which does not allow studying how the policies could strengthen clientelism on the one hand, and how clientelism could participate in the policy process on the other. The scientific division between analyses on public policy and clientelism is shared among several areas of research: in France and Europe (for instance, Andersen, Eliassen, 1993; Hassenteufel, 2011), in North-America (Araral et al., 2015), in Africa (Darbon, Provini, 2018) or even in Latin America (Barrault-Stella et al., 2019). However, some recent analyses focus on political clientelism (Mattina, 2016) or policy reform (Roinsard 2007; Vommaro, 2017) and prove the present confusions between public policy and political clientelism but this confusion is not a fundamental issue of their research. These results of the scientific literature question and redesign the scientific discussion between the analyses on public policy and political clientelism.

This panel proposal is part of the research program “Public Policies in La Reunion”, backed by the research laboratory Centre for Legal Research at the University of La Reunion. However, the panel aims at exceeding the initial frame of the project (La Réunion and France) in order to establish new scientific collaborations and to internationalize the exchange on this research question.

The literature in social sciences is framed by a scientific division between the analyses on public policy and political clientelism. The panel intends to study public policy and political clientelism at the same time. Paper proposals may address at least one of the following topics:

1)      The intertwining between the nature of state and production of public policy or political clientelism. An implied assumption frames the scientific research: the link between the nature of the state and the capacity of state agents to produce public policy. The scientific literature usually suggests that public policies are only produced by modern states, while political patronage is a specific characteristic of neo-patrimonial states. We invite papers to question this academic assumption: do modern states only produce public policies? Do neopatrimonial states only produce clientelism? To what extent do these results invite us to reconsider the classical literature about this implied assumption?

2)      Methodological issues. How can we analyse public policy and political clientelism processes at the same time? Can we map clientelist networks and public policy together, in particular in using the stages approach (problem identification; programme development; programme implementation; programme evaluation)? We invite papers to identify the appropriate methodology to study public policy and political clientelism together (interviews, archives, mapping of actors, etc.).

3)      Epistemological issues. Does the scientific division between policy analyses and studies on political clientelism prevail in all scientific communities? This research area should contribute to a better knowledge of scientific divisions in European, American, Asian and African scientific communities.

The expected contributions should rely on qualitative and/or quantitative empirical data. Priority will be given to comparative research to diversify case studies and to encourage crossed discussions. This panel aims at creating new research networks and laying the ground for common publications.