Institution Building in Weak States. Andrew Radin
ruling elites use their patron-client networks to maintain power. First, elites use their patron-client networks to distribute resources to supporters, especially to secure votes. Elites typically work through “brokers,” who ensure the support of larger numbers of individuals. Although direct “vote buying” may occur, providing resources to party members or to groups who might be more likely to support the party (“pork-barrel politics”) appears more common.44 Ethnicity often offers a means for elites to identify supporters and target patronage more narrowly.45
Second, elites can use their networks to restrict or unfairly skew electoral competition. Elites or their proxies may use blackmail, intimidation, or murder to prevent, dissuade, or harm opponents pursuing political office. Elite proxies may include private security organizations or criminal groups, or elites may be able to use their networks to manipulate state organizations, such as the police, to pursue individual, party, or group agendas.46 Elites may also use their networks to control organizations that regulate or mediate electoral competition, such as the media or election boards.47
Third, elites may use their networks to gather resources to enrich themselves or fund their political activities. Some parties may be able to draw on legal, locally generated financial support or may receive donations from foreign sources, such as a diaspora. Other parties may use their patron-client networks to expropriate state resources, draw proceeds from private or state-owned enterprises, or rely on connections with criminal organizations.48
Fourth, patron-client networks help elites govern and exercise control over state institutions. Elites’ personal networks extend throughout the government and into state institutions and therefore offer elites informal channels to gather and exchange information. Even in developed societies, personal connections between senior officials and subordinates establish trust beyond formal hierarchies.
A foreign-supported reform effort can often threaten the ruling elites’ use of their patron-client networks to maintain power. Measuring or anticipating the potential threat can be challenging since patron-client networks are often secret, diffuse, and constantly evolving. Each case study assesses the threat to patron-client networks using a three-step process. The case studies first identify the ruling elites by pinpointing the main political parties within governing coalitions during the reform effort. Some case studies focus only on elites within a particular ethnic group who had the greatest potential to oppose reform.
The case studies then describe the patron-client networks that are believed to be essential to elites’ power and relevant to the particular state institution. I use interviews, investigative journalism, criminal investigations, think tank reporting, and academic writing to identify these networks. In some cases it is possible to uncover the networks of specific political parties. The case studies considering BiH, for example, draw on an account from Louis-Alexandre Berg that the leadership of the Srpska demokratska stranka, or Serb Democratic Party (SDS), in BiH in 2002 to 2006 was not as dependent on connections with wartime leaders as the prior SDS leadership.49 Other cases draw on accounts of the general types of patron-client networks that are politically important in a given society. For example, interviewees in Kosovo asserted that each of the major parties depended on revenue from oil smuggling.50
Finally, the case studies evaluate to what extent foreign demands or recommendations, if implemented, would indeed threaten elites’ ability to use their networks to maintain power. Reforms could threaten elite networks by restructuring an institution to reduce the influence of politically linked officials; changing recruitment or vetting to limit the ability of the ruling elite to control an institution; or strengthening a state institution in a way that would weaken elites, such as by bolstering anticorruption mechanisms. Not all reform efforts that touch on elite networks are necessarily threatening, however. To be assessed as a threat to patron-client networks, the reform must realistically impact elite networks in a way that would reduce elites’ power or influence.
Hypotheses for Reform Threatening Patron-Client Networks
The domestic opposition theory expects that when there is a threat to the patron-client networks of the ruling elite, reforms will fail to make improvements unless moderate or high levels of international resources are present. If such resources are present, the ultimate improvement in state institutions is expected to be modest at best (Hypothesis 2). As for nationalist goals, I specify process hypotheses for how the theory expects this outcome to occur (see table 2.3).
When reform threatens the patron-client networks of the ruling elite, the theory expects these elites to engage in private opposition, meaning concealed, denied, or other nonpublic efforts to undermine reform (Hypothesis 2A). Public opposition is expected to be more effective, but elites may not be able to rally public opposition because their patron-client networks tend to be unpopular, so reforms that threaten elites’ networks often have public support (Hypothesis 2B). Elites find it more difficult to sway public opinion by using patron-client networks than by using nationalist appeals because patron-client networks typically benefit a relatively small portion of the population, often at the expense of the larger society. Surveys indicate frustration with corruption in post-conflict societies or other societies where foreign actors pursue reform.51 Analysts in Bosnia and Kosovo, for example, also observe that many people in these societies support outside intervention in part because they hope foreign actors will strengthen anticorruption initiatives, prosecute senior officials for criminal activities, or strengthen the police to enable them to address high-level criminality.52 Even if they lack broad public support, in some cases elites may still attempt to publicly oppose reform by voicing their objections or by rallying small-scale protests. These activities are unlikely to be effective since foreign actors will not perceive broad support for elite opposition and may in some cases view such opposition as an attempt to defend networks associated with illicit or criminal activities.
TABLE 2.3. Hypotheses Given a Threat to the Ruling Elites’ Patron-Client Networks
| Outcome | Process |
| H2: No significant improvements unless moderate or high international resources are present. If such resources are present, modest improvements are likely. | H2A: Elites may attempt public opposition, but it is unlikely to be effective. Elites will mainly use private opposition. H2B: Public opinion is expected to support or not strongly oppose reform. H2C: Private opposition involves delay, theft, and informal co-optation of state institutions. H2D: Techniques specified by international resource theory can mitigate the impact of private opposition to some degree. |
Some elites may have larger networks that can reach more people within a society. However, as elite networks grow, the average benefits provided to individuals within the networks become smaller and less likely to motivate individual participation in public protests. In smaller societies where patron-client networks dominate the state and the economy, such as neopatrimonial regimes, patronage networks may be relatively more influential.53 In such societies it may be easier for elites to rally broad public protests, as observed in the case of patronage-linked protests in Timor-Leste (see chapter 4). Nevertheless, the theory expects nationalist appeals to be generally more effective at swaying public opinion than elites’ use of their networks.
Elite private opposition can occur through at least three mechanisms: delay, theft, or co-optation (Hypothesis 2C). For each of these mechanisms elites make use of their networks within the target state institution. The intensity and tactics that elites use to oppose reform may vary across the different foreign demands or recommendations, depending on the threat posed to their networks and their ability to block reform. Similarly, if there is variation in the intensity of foreign efforts to undermine elite networks in different regions, issue areas, or echelons of an institution, elites are expected to engage in greater private opposition in areas