Political Exchange

From Tradition to Modernity

Political exchange refers to situations where resources are exchanged between individuals and the collective, as well as public and nonpublic actors taking part in the policy process. The nature of such an exchange depends on the political context and on the institutional [Page 718]setting in which it is embedded. One major form that is described as prevalent in traditional societies is clientelism, also called patronage: Politicians, once in power, reward those voters or militants whose support was necessary for their election with particularistic benefits, such as jobs in public administration. Clientelism as a form of political exchange where votes or partisan loyalty are traded with exclusive “club goods” differs from another related form of political exchange, which is corruption: The latter is based on money as a medium (e.g., firms use bribery of civil servants or politicians to acquire privileged access to public procurement) and is illegal. Clientelism (and of course corruption) is also a feature of contemporary, advanced societies, but the personal relation that it traditionally implies between clients and patrons (“bosses”) is typically replaced by an exchange between mass parties capable of providing state resources (“cartel parties”) and broader electoral constituencies. Also, theories inspired by economics (primarily Mancur Olson's solution to the free riding problem in collective action) point out that organizational leaderships have to provide “selective incentives” of a clientelistic nature to ensure that the rank-and-file will effectively mobilize. Collective adherence to a common cause is not a sufficient condition, simply because in order to maximize the benefits of mobilization it is rational to externalize its costs (time investment, risk taking, etc.). And the more modern—that is, secularized—a society is, the more likely that societal actors will resort to these kinds of calculations.

Political Exchange in Arenas of Partisan and Interest Representation

The major reason why actors must engage in exchange relations is that they have competing interests but are at the same time caught in relations of interdependence. In differentiated societies, pluralistic political contexts or fragmented institutional settings (checks and balances) and the support of several actors with frequently divergent interests is necessary for decision making. This is mirrored in log-rolling practices between parties in governmental behavior, which are often required for the achievement of a majority by coalition building. In log-rolling an actor agrees to make concessions to another actor on issues that are secondary to the former but crucial to the latter, under the condition that the actor benefiting from these concessions will in the future make similar concessions on points that are of marginal interest to it but of central concern to the other actor. Log-rolling presupposes that the preferences of actors can be weighed in terms of their intensity and requires an institutional context to make interactions durable (e.g., government committees), which, in turn, favor the building of trust between actors. Similar forms of political exchange resting on “differed gratifications” were found in so-called neocorporatist summit agreements between the leaderships of organizations representing business and labor interests. Business has a blackmailing power vis-à-vis labor as it provides jobs, whereas labor's blackmailing power resides in its capacity to generate turbulences through strikes and other forms of collective action. To avoid a stalemate, labor representatives agree to moderate their claims for higher wages, having obtained assurances from business representatives that full employment will be preserved. For such agreements to be enforced, interest organizations must secure control over and compliance from their members, which is more likely when the organizations are encompassing enough to be preserved from competition for the representation of interests (representational monopolies).

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