Clientelism, Poverty Alleviation, and the Self-Restraining Reform in Mexico.
Does democracy dampen clientelism? Recent scholarly works present evidence that the targeted social programs are extensively used to mobilize political support through clientelist exchanges. This study argues that the degree of clientelism is determined by types of targeting methods, monitoring institutions over social programs, and social auditing, which constrain discretionary spending practices. Particularly, it shows that in new democracies, policy-oriented and institutional reforms enacted in tandem with democratization tie hands of self-interested politicians, and help promote programmatic redistribution which benefits the poor. Using an original dataset, my econometric analysis shows that anti-poverty spending became less clientelist and increasingly pro-poor in Mexico between 1988 and 2006. By so doing, this study provides important implications for other new democracies, which are plagued with wide-spread clientelism.
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