Abstract

PRD politicians and officials widely use clientelism to structure their relationships with citizens. This is not only due to the entrenchment of clientelism in Mexican politics, or to high rates of poverty and inequality, but also to the limited institutionalization of democratic rules inside the party. The latter stems largely from the party’s electoral strategy in its formative years and has resulted in uncontrolled factional battles that play out through clientelism. The Brazilian PT faced external and internal conditions quite similar to those of the PRD, but its early focus on organization building and policy change allowed it to avoid clientelism to a greater degree. The analysis problematizes the trend of using minimalist definitions that assume clientelism to be non-democratic because these result in conceptual stretching and decreased explanatory power.