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Modern patron-client relations and historical clientelism. Some clues from ancient Republican Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Luis Roniger
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Extract

Much has been written in the last two decades on clientelism and patron-client relations. From a concept of relatively marginal concern in the social sciences, clientelism has gained analytical clarity and has been applied with greater precision to political and social relationships found in many contemporary societies.

Type
Overt and Covert Politics: clients, factieux, brigands
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , May 1983 , pp. 63 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1983

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References

(1) See Roniger, L., Clientelism and patron-client relations: a bibliography, pp. 297–330Google Scholar, in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Lbmarchand, R., Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (London, Sage, 1981Google Scholar). For a fuller presentation of this development in studies of clientelism and its relation with developments in theoretical controversies in sociology see S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Risenstadt, The study of patron-client relations and recent developments in sociological theory, ibid. pp. 271–295. For works that gave conceptual consistency to this area of research see among others Wolf, E., Kinship, friendship, and patron-client relationships in complex societies, in Banton, M., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London, Tavistock, 1966)Google Scholar, ASA Monographs, 1–22; Graziano, L., A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Clientelism (New York, Cornell University Western Societies Program Occasional Papers, 4 1975)Google Scholar; Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J., Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London, Duckworth, 1977)Google Scholar; and Schmidt, S. W. et al. , Friends, Followers, and Factions (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

(2) See a detailed treatment on these topics in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, L., Patron-Client relations as a model of structuring social exchange, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XXII (1980), 42–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, L., Clientelism in Communist systems: a comparative perspective, Studies in Comparative Communism, XIV (1981), 233–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(3) Obviously, these phenomena were not ignored in historical literature, but the implications of such materials were not incorporated into the comparative research of clientelism in the social sciences. Among works which attempted such an analytical convergence see for example Rabibhadana, A., Clientship and class structure in the early Bangkok period, pp. 93–124Google Scholarin Skinner, G. W. and Kirsch, A. T., Change and Persistance in Thai Society, essays in honor of Lauristan Sharp (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Blank, S., Patrons, brokers, and clients within a colonial Spanish American elite: Caracas, 1595–1627, Historical Methods Newsletter, VIII (1975), 132–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Patrons, clients, and kin in seventeenth-century Caracas: a methodological essay in Colonial Spanish American social history, Hispanic American Historical Review, LIV (1974), 260–283Google Scholar; Davis, J., People of the Mediterranean. An essay in comparative social anthropology (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976)Google Scholar, Chapter 4; and Roland, N., Rome, démocratie impossible ? Les acteurs du pouvoir dans la cité romaine (Paris, Actes Sud, 1981)Google Scholar; and Veyne, P., Clientéle et corruption au service de l'Éitat: la vénalité des offices dans le Bas-Empire romain, Annales E.S.C. [Paris], XXXVI (1981), 339–360Google Scholar.

(4) See, for instance, Weingrod, A., Patrons, patronage and political parties, Comparative Studies in Society and History, (1968), 376–400Google Scholar; Scott, J. C., Patron-client politics and political change in southeast Asia, American Political Science Review, LXVI (1972), 91–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, The erosion of patron-client bonds and social change in rural Southeast Asia, Journal of Asian Studies, XXXII (1972), 5–37. This perspective oriented many of the studies on clientelism in specific countries. This dychotomic emphasis, so akin to the tradition that goes back in sociology to Sir Henry S. Maine's attribution of social systemic qualities to the Roman categories of status and contractus in the 1860s, and to F. Tönnies' distinction of Gemeinschaft and Geselschaft in the 1880s, was also widely applied after the 1950s in studies of modernization and in the so-called rural-urban discontinuities. In these areas such an approach was later severely criticized both theoretically and from the point of view of its empirical validity. Forthese criticisms see Pahl, R. E., The rural-urban continuum, Sociologia Ruralis, VI (1966), 299–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sotelo, I., Sociologia de América Latina (Madrid, Tecnos, 1975)Google Scholar; and Eisenstadt, S. N., Tradition, Change, and Modernity (New York, Wiley, 1973)Google Scholar. In the study of clientelism, such orientation still remained a major approach of analysis.

(5) On the literature on patron-client relations and clientelism in these countries see the works included in L. Ronigeb, Clientelism and patron-client relations, op. cit.

(6) This point is developed in greater detail in S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Cultural and structural continuities and development; transformation and persistence of patron-client relations, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, VIII (1982), 29–52Google Scholar.

(7) See for instance Pool, D., The Politics of Patronage: elites and social structure in Iraq (Princeton University Ph. D. thesis, 1972)Google Scholar; Johnson, M., Political bosses and their gangs: Zu'ama and Qabadayat in the Sunni Muslim quarters of Beirut, pp. 207–224Google Scholarin E. Gellner and J. Waterbury, op. cit.; Schneider, J. and Schneider, P., Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily (New York, Academic Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

(8) This has been for long emphasized both by the symbolic-interactionist and the structural-functionalist schools of sociology. See among others Goffman, E., Relations in Public, Microstudies of the Public Order (New York, Harper and Row, 1971)Google Scholar; Parsons, T. et al. , Theories of Society (Glencoe, Free Press, 1961)Google Scholar. On the institutional mechanisms and rituals that uphold basic symbols of social order and conceptions of security in developed modern societies see Parsons', T., Mayhew's, L. and Turner's, T. S. articles in Sociological Inquiry, XXXVIII (1968), 105–160Google Scholar.

(9) The texts included here are from Lewis, M. and Reinhold, M., Roman Civilization. A source book (New York, Harper Torchbook, 1966), vol. I, pp. 58–62 and 102–105Google Scholar. See also Rabello, A. M., Effetti personali delta potestas in dirito Romano, Thesis of Doctor Iuris, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971Google Scholar, especially part II: ‘Le leges regiae’.

(10) On fides see among others Gelzer, M., The Roman Nobility (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1969), pp. 62 ff.Google Scholar, and Brunt, P. A., ‘Amicitia’ in the Late Roman Republic, pp. 197–218Google Scholarin R. Seager (ed.), The Crisis of the Roman Republic; studies in political and social history (Cambridge, Heffer and Sons, 1969)Google Scholar.

(11) Mommsen, T., The History of Rome (London & New York, J. M. Bent and E. P. Rutton, 1930), vol. I, p. 61Google Scholar. See also Badian, E., Foreign Clientelae (246–70 B.C.) (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

(12) See Boissier, G., Cicero and his Friends. A study of Roman society in the time of Caesar (New York, Cooper Square, 1970), pp. 109–112Google Scholar. On manumissio and its significance see M. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. I, passim, and Treggiari, S., Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 1 for a detailed description of the motives and forms of manumission.

(13) See Brunt, P. B., The Roman Mob, pp. 74–102Google Scholar in Finley, M. I. (ed.), Studies in Ancient History (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Past and Present Series, 1974)Google Scholar. See esp. pp. 80ff.

(14) Mommsen, T., The History, p. 61Google Scholar.

(15) Watson, A., The Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 226–236Google Scholar.

(16) Badian, E., Foreign Clientelae, pp. 3ffGoogle Scholar.

(17) de Coulanges, N. D. Fustel, The Ancient City (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, n.d. [1864]), p. 227Google Scholar; for a rigorous treatment of the legal position of freedmen in relation to patrons see Treggiari, S., Roman Freedmen, pp. 68–81Google Scholar.

(18) Watson, A., The Law of Persons, pp. 226–229Google Scholar; and de Coulanges, Fustel, The Ancient City, pp. 227ffGoogle Scholar; Treggiari, , op. cit. pp. 87–161Google Scholar analyses the different careers followed by freedmen, which in part were conditioned by the climate of opinion of aristocratic circles regarding the forms of employment proper to gentlemen and those appropriate to liberti.

(19) de Coulanges, Fustel, op. cit. pp. 258–259Google Scholar.

(20) As such, their role was not different of that of ingenui: they were employed in strong-arm tactics as well as confidential go-between, political workers, and administrators. See, in what follows, sections 4 and 6.

(21) This section is based mainly on Taylor, L. R., Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

(22) See Taylor, chapter 3, on the differences between the comitia centuriata dominated by the optimates and the comitia tributa, the chief legislative body which elected the lower magistrates, and which was more open to popular influences.

(23) Their popular policy was mainly— with the exception of the Gracchi— a device to attain power rather than a ‘policy’ oriented to the establishment of popular rights. In Taylor's words, it seems that they ‘played popularis’, as shown in Crassus' and to some degree Pompey's cases.

(24) Ibid. p. 42.

(25) Ibid. p. 43.

(26) Ibid. p. 39.

(27) The use of violence was anchored in Roman customary and legal traditions, which recognized the use of force in private and political disputes. See Lintott, A. W., Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

(28) Taylor, , Party Politics, esp. pp. 47 and 18Google Scholar.

(29) See Gelzer, , The Roman Nobility, pp. 104–106Google Scholar.

(30) The incorporation of communities into the Roman Empire was effected through different arrangements which changed over time. Among these the use of the principle of civitas sine suffragio was of particular relevance for the emergence of ‘foreign’ clienteles. By it, ‘limited’ citizenship was conferred principally to communes in the more urbanized areas of Italy without granting the main prerogatives that it traditionally entailed: voting and the holding of offices. See Badian, Foreign Clienteles. The definition of this arrangement changed over time as, from a provincial town, Rome became an Imperial power. See Sheewin-White, A. N., The Roman Citizenship (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973), part IGoogle Scholar.

(31) On these points see Gelzer, , The Roman Nobility, pp. 89–92 and 100–101Google Scholar. On the saliency of personal ties between Roman senators and equites see Shatz-man, I., Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (Bruxelles, Latomus, vol. 142: 1975), part IIGoogle Scholar.

(32) On the forms of establishment of clientelae discussed in this paragraph see Gelzer, p. 87 ff; Taylor, chapter 2; and Badian, passim.

(33) Hospitium means to undertake a commitment to offer mutual hospitality if the need arises. On the problematic of hospitality in general and in modern societies in particular see among others J.Rivers, Pitt, The stranger, the guest, and the hostile host: introduction to the study of the laws of hospitality, pp. 13–30Google Scholar, in Peristiany, J. G. (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology (Paris-The Hague, Mouton, 1968)Google Scholar; and the issue of Antropological Quarterly on ‘Visiting patterns and social dynamics in Eastern Mediterranean communities’, XLVII (1974), No. 1Google Scholar.

(34) Taylor, , Party Politics, p. 39Google Scholar.

(35) Especially in his aedalship. See the stages of Roman political education and advancement in Taylor, pp. 29–33.

(36) On the praerogativa in voting in the comitia centuriata see Taylor, pp. 56–57.

(37) Taylor, , Party Politics, p. 47Google Scholar. See also A. N. Sherman-White, The Roman Citizenship, chapter XIII.

(38) Badian, E., Foreign Clientelae, pp. 165–168Google Scholar.

(39) Brunt, P. A., ‘Amicitia’ in the Late Roman Republic, pp. 197–218Google Scholar, in Seager, , op. cit. quotation from p. 205Google Scholar. On the nature of unstructured social relations see Leyton, E. (ed.), The Compact-Selected Dimensions of Friendship. Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1974Google Scholar; LaFontaine, J. S., Unstructured social relations, West African Journal of Sociology and Political Science, I (1979), 51–81Google Scholar; and Boissevain, J., Friends of Friends: networks, manipulators, and coalitions (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1974)Google Scholar.

(40) See on this point Taylor, Party Politics; and Treggiari, , Roman Freedmen, pp. 177–193Google Scholar.

(41) Idem.

(42) Gelzer, , The Roman Nobility, pp. 103–104Google Scholar.

(43) On such ties see Gelzer, pp. 104–105, 85.

(44) See Taylor, chapter 1.

(45) Badian, E., Foreign Clientelae, p. 41Google Scholar. This section is based mainly on this work.

(46) In Asia, where any violation of boundaries would be patent and undeniable, Rome used other means as the demarcation line. See Badian, pp. 80–83, and 35–43.

(47) Badian, pp. 43 and 82.

(48) Nevertheless, it is significant that, even if mere pretexts, such arguments were, in the first place, considered to be necessary by the powerful party interested in severing the link, and secondly, that they were formulated in relation to the theme of reciprocity and fulfilment of binding obligations.

(49) Badian, p. 51. See on these points also pp. 43–62.

(50) Badian, ‘Epilogue’.

(51) These variations will be analyzed elsewhere. See note 52 that follows.

(52) For reasons of space, other aspects of clientelism, such as the collective or individual character of incumbency or the various crystallizations of clientelistic exchanges, which are also important for an understanding of variations, are not discussed here. These and other dimensions of differentiation of patron-client relations will be analyzed in detail in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Roniger, L., Patrons, Clients, and Friends (London, Cambridge, University Press, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(53) See Peters, E. L., The tied and the free (Lybia), pp. 167–188Google Scholarin Peristiany, J. E. (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology (Paris/The Hague, Mouton, 1968)Google Scholar; and Id. Patronage in Curenaica, pp. 275–290 in Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J. (eds), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London, Duckworth, 1977)Google Scholar.

(54) See among others the issue of Cahiers d'études africaines, IX (1969)Google Scholar on personal relations of dependence; Lemarchand, R. (ed.), African Kingdoms in Perspective. Political change and modernization in monarchical settings (London, F. Cass, 1977)Google Scholar; Vinogradov, A., Ethnicity, cultural discontinuity and power brokers in Northern Iraq: the case of the Shabak, American Ethnologist, I (1974), 207–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, G. W. and Kirsch, A. T. (eds), Change and Persistence in Thai Society, essays in honor of Lauristan Sharp (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Rassam, A., Al-taba'iyya: power, patronage and marginal groups in Northern Iraq, pp. 157–166Google Scholarin Gellner and Waterbury, Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies; and Cahnman, W. J., Der Pariah und der Fremde: eine begriffliche Klärung, Archives européennes de sociologie, XV (1974), 166–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(55) This was for instance the case in the East African multi-ethnic societies, where formal contracts with institutionalized rights and obligations remained unchanged until they were totally banished when radical changes in the structure of power were realized. Or well, the coalescence of clientelism with congregational cleavages in Northern Iraqi Christian-Moslem communities constituted a stress that broke into a violent struggle in conditions of rapid modernization. For bibliographical references see note 54 and Roniger, L., A bibliography, pp. 316–318 and 311Google Scholar.

(56) On market systems and politics see Lindblom, C., Politics and Markets (New York, Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar; and S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patronclient relations as a model of structuring social exchanges, op. cit.

(57) See S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniokb, ‘Cultural and structural continuities’, and ‘Clientelism in Communist systems’, op. cit., for a broader treatment of this point. See also Lego, K., Patrons, Clients and Politicians: new perspectives on political clientelism (Berkeley, Institute of International Studies, Working Papers on Development, No. 3, n.d.)Google Scholar.

(58) On this aspect of patron-client relations see among others Blok, A., The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860–1960 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1974)Google Scholar; Friedrich, F., Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1970)Google Scholar; Hottinger, A., Zu'ama in historical perspective, pp. 85–105Google Scholarin Binder, L. (ed.), Politics in Lebanon (New York, Wiley & Sons, 1966)Google Scholar; and Pang, Eul-Soo, Coronelismoe Oligarquias, 1889–1934 (Rio de Janeiro, Civilizaçao Brasileira, 1979)Google Scholar.

(59) See for instanceBlok, A., Mafia and peasant rebellion as contrasting factors in Sicilian latifundism, Archives européennes de sociologie, X (1969), 95–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. C. Scott, The erosion of patron-client bonds, loc. cit.; Bartra, R. et al. , Cadquismo y poder politico en el México rural (Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1975)Google Scholar; Lamounibr, R. et al. (eds), Direito, Cidadania e Participa¸ao (São Paulo, Taq, 1981)Google Scholar.

(60) Roniger, L., Clientelism and trust in Latin America, pp. 171–191Google Scholar in Roniger, L. (ed.), Man and Society in Latin America, A sociological reader (Jerusalem, Academon, 1981)Google Scholar; Id. Ronioer, Relaciones personates, confianza mutua y dificultades institucionales en América Latina (Jerusalem, ms, 1982). The structural and symbolic conditions of emergence of clientelism were detailed in S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patron-client relations as a model', op. cit. and will be analyzed at greater length in Id.Patrons, Clients and Friends (London, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

* I wish to thank professors S. N. Eisenstadt and Erik Cohen, Dr. Uri Almagor and Mr. Curtis Aronson for their comments on the manuscript.

(61) Such for instance seems to have been the source of legitimacy granted to the Northeastern Brazilian fazendeiros by patronthe local chapel ministers in the nineteenth century, which produced partly its emicrepresentation as a tender form of patronclient relations. Its absence was conducive to the de-legitimation and instability of clientelistic networks around secular landowners in the Lebanese settings in which Gilsenan carried on his research. See on Fheyre, Brazil G., Casa-Grande e Senzala (Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, 1966 [1933]Google Scholar; Hutchinson, B., The patrondependent relationship in Brazil: a preliminary, examination, Sociologia Ruralis, VI (1966), 3–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and A. Hall, Concepts and terms. Patron-client relations, Journal of Peasant Studies I (1974) 506–509Google Scholar; on Lebanon, see Gilsbnan, M., Against patron-client relations, pp. 167–183Google Scholarin Gellner and Waterbury, Patrons and Clients, op. cit.