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- Oxford University Press
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- © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society.
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- 10.1093/afraf/adad014
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Abstract
Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens con- tinue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling per- sistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their polit- ical leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by lead- ers, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework. *Kathleen Klaus (kathleen.klaus@pcr.uu.se) is an Associate Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Jeffrey Paller ( jpaller@usfca.edu) is an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA, and a Researcher at the Governance and Local Development Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. Martha Wilfahrt (martha.wilfahrt@berkeley.edu) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. The authors would like to thank Miguel Pellicer, Eva Wegner, Christof Hartmann, and other participants at the Demanding Clientelism workshop, as well as Marc Ross, Leonard Wantchekon, Joan Ricart-Huguet, Sara Lowes, Leo Arriola, members of the UC Berkeley African Politics Workshop, and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and incisive feedback on this manuscript. Special thanks to our research participants who made this study possible. 185 186 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Clientelism—the exchange of benefits for political support —remains an enduring feature of African politics, despite rising urbanization, increas- 3 4 ingly programmatic politics, and competitive elections. While conven- tional explanations tend to focus on the interests and incentives of parties and politicians, recent research shows how citizens reinforce clientelist 5 6 ties, using these relationships to demand more accountable governance. The persistence of clientelism in Africa remains puzzling, however, because 7 8 it is rarely monitored and does not clearly affect electoral victories. More- over, while citizens are often well aware of the costs of clientelism, they continue to engage in clientelist relationships even when their demands are rarely met. We argue that an important yet overlooked feature of client participa- tion in patron–client relations—and one that helps explain clientelism’s persistence—is the demand for social recognition. Social recognition is the reciprocal expectation that people are recognized ‘as moral persons and for their social achievements’. Indeed, while conventional theories of clientelism pertain primarily to material exchange, we aim to enrich our understanding of the patron–client relationship by calling attention to its non-material dimensions. Citizens seek out politicians who present themselves as advocates for a particular group of voters, who recognize the legitimacy and imperative of citizens’ claims, and who promise to restore 1. Allen Hicken, ‘Clientelism’, Annual Review of Political Science 14 (2011), pp. 289–310. 2. Noah Nathan, Electoral politics and Africa’s urban transition: Class and ethnicity in Ghana (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2019); Jeffrey W. Paller, Democracy in Ghana: Everyday politics in urban Africa (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2019). 3. Jeremy Horowitz, Multiethnic democracy: The logic of elections and policymaking in Kenya (Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2022); Robin Harding, ‘Attribution and account- ability: Voting for roads in Ghana’, World Politics 67, 4 (2015), pp. 656–689. 4. Jaimie Bleck and Nicolas van de Walle, Electoral politics in Africa since 1990 (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2018). 5. Miguel Pellicer, Eva Wegner, Lindsay Benstead, and Ellen Lust, ‘Poor people’s beliefs and the dynamics of clientelism’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 33, 3 (2021), pp. 300–332. 6. Portia Roelofs, ‘Beyond programmatic versus patrimonial politics: Contested concep- tions of legitimate distribution in Nigeria’, Journal of Modern African Studies 57, 3 (2019), pp. 415–436; Anne Pitcher, Mary Moran, and Michael Johnston, ‘Rethinking patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism in Africa’, African Studies Review 52, 1 (2009), pp. 125–156; Jeffrey W. Paller, ‘Dignified public expression: A new logic of political accountability’, Comparative Politics 52, 1 (2019), pp. 85–116. 7. Sarah Brierley and Eric Kramon, ‘Party campaign strategies in Ghana: Rallies, canvassing and handouts’, African Affairs 119, 477 (2020), pp. 587–603; Allen Hicken and Noah Nathan, ‘Clientelism’s red herrings: Dead ends and new directions in the study of nonprogrammatic politics’, Annual Review of Political Science 23, 1 (2020), pp. 277–294. 8. Jenny Guardado and Leonard Wantchekon, ‘Do electoral handouts affect voting behav- ior?’, Electoral Studies 53 (2018), pp. 139–149. 9. Keith Weghorst and Staffan Lindberg, ‘What drives the swing voter in Africa?’, American Journal of Political Science 57, 3 (2013), pp. 717–734. 10. Axel Honneth, Disrespect: The normative foundations of critical theory (Polity Press, UK, 2007), 71. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 187 citizens’ dignity and voice in the political sphere. Thus, while citizens do make material demands on politicians, we suggest that citizens use the patron–client interface as a way to demand social recognition as well, both as individuals and members of identity-based groups. Specifically, we argue that citizen engagement in political clientelism can provide a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be included and protected from harm. All three dimensions are rooted in the understanding of citizenship and belong- ing in the polity. Importantly, and as with materialist exchanges, citizens understand social recognition as a contingent practice. That is, they expect leaders to bestow social recognition—by listening, showing concern, or creating time—in exchange for their support. We aim to make three specific contributions. First, we theorize social recognition as an alternative logic, in addition to material incentives and moral economy approaches, that can help explain the persistence of patron–client relationships in the face of rampant ‘non’-delivery of promised material benefits. To be clear, we are not arguing that social recognition is a constitutive part of clientelism, but rather that citizens often ‘embed’ demands for recognition in their relationships with patrons. Second, we demonstrate how participation in clientelist relations can be a powerful strategy for citizens to gain decision-making power and demand respect as political agents. Third, by uncovering citizen agency in patron– client exchanges, we consider the emotional side of democratic politics. When citizens do not feel recognized, individuals may experience a deep sense of political betrayal, disillusionment with democracy, and anger— feelings that do not always correspond to a citizen’s material well-being or receipt of goods. In what follows, we detail our theory of social recognition and its relation- ship to clientelism on the continent. We illustrate our theory with evidence from urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya, using each case to illustrate one of the three dimensions detailed earlier. With multi-party elections as an important scope condition, we show how similar demands for social recognition play out across countries with distinct historical and institutional features, suggesting that social recognition is a durable com- panion to the clientelist relationship. The paper concludes with a discussion of the argument’s implications for our understanding of clientelism and democratic practice on the continent. 11. Irene Bloemraad, Will Kymlicka, Michèle Lamont, and Leanne Hing, ‘Membership without social citizenship? Deservingness and redistribution as grounds for equality’, Daedalus 148, 3 (2019), pp. 73–104. 188 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Social recognition and clientelist politics Our argument builds on two dominant approaches to the study of clien- telism. Instrumentalist accounts focus on the ways that politicians dis- tribute selective and programmatic goods in exchange for political support, focusing primarily on the strategies politicians use to win elections and sig- nal the credibility of their commitments. Other studies focus on the logic of voters, suggesting that citizens use clientelism to secure livelihood goods amidst contexts of scarcity. These accounts predict that clientelism will decline as citizens become less vulnerable to adverse economic shocks or when politicians have few incentives to keep voters under-resourced and dependent. Moral economy accounts, by contrast, emphasize the importance of social relations and repertoires of reciprocal obligation. While early work in this vein saw clientelism as being built on social ties embedded in a pre- modern form of governance, recent moral economy theories show that even with competitive elections, politicians rely on hand-outs to signal their virtue and benevolence. We acknowledge the utility of these arguments but suggest that they miss an important practice enabled by the patron–client exchange. Notably, while the hope for material benefits motivates voters to engage in clien- telism, citizens simultaneously use these exchanges to demand that their leaders recognize their humanity, dignity, and right to a certain standard of living. The targeted distribution of a good or service can symbolize this act of recognition, but recognition does not require a material component. For example, citizens might feel recognized simply by being given the time and space to voice their concerns or air grievances. Our argument is thus twofold: First, the patron–client relationship not only can satisfy the material demands of citizens but also can establish the norms and practices to have their emotional or psychic demands acknowl- edged as well. Second, social recognition can occur even when material demands are not met. Notably, it is often ‘the process—rather than the 12. Eric Kramon, Money for votes: The causes and consequences of electoral clientelism in Africa (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2018). 13. Simeon Nichter, Votes for sur vival: Relational clientelism in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2018). 14. Gustavo Bobonis, Paul Gertler, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, and Simeon Nichter, ‘Vul- nerability and clientelism’, American Economic Review 112, 11 (2022), pp. 3627–3659. 15. Javier Auyero, Poor people’s politics: Peronist survival networks and the legacy of Evita (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2000); Hicken, ‘Clientelism’. 16. Steffan Schmidt, Friends, followers, and factions: A reader in political clientelism (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1977). 17. James Scott, ‘Patron-client politics and political change in Southeast Asia’, American Political Science Review 66, 1 (1972), pp. 91–113. 18. Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch, and Justin Willis, The moral economy of elections in Africa (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2021). DEMANDING RECOGNITION 189 outcome—’of demanding benefits, played out through face-to-face inter- actions between politicians and citizens, that constitutes the act of social recognition. Hence, even when politicians fail to distribute goods, citi- zens still seek social recognition, providing the glue that can help maintain clientelist networks. Importantly, clientelist exchanges do not necessarily involve social recog- nition. Indeed, in many scenarios, they are distinct phenomena. Yet, we suspect that citizens themselves often see a blurred line between the two. In democracies where clientelism pervades political life, it is at the patron– client interface that average citizens are best positioned to seek recognition. In these contexts, we see social recognition as being rooted in a contin- gent exchange: Clients are more inclined to support politicians who bestow recognition and to withdraw support from politicians who fail to do so. To clarify further, we also see the concept of social recognition as distinct from representation, which implies an institutionalized act of ‘standing for’. Social recognition does not require that patrons relay citizen demands to other fora because it is the act of listening that is critical. Our theory of social recognition builds partly on scholars such as Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, each of whom emphasizes the centrality of dignity and respect in the practice of democratic politics. We also follow the lead of scholars like Auyero, who suggest that political clientelism is a system that institutionalizes demands for recognition in the practices of daily life, providing a mode through which citizens assert claims to dignity and respect. Specifically, we suggest that political clientelism offers citizens a chance to demand that their leaders recognize their capacity for agency, which Tay- lor explains as an ‘essential aspect of a human beings’ sense of self ’. Social recognition is thus a key feature of human dignity, with its denial evoking a deep sense of loss capable of generating moral injury. One implication is that when patrons fail to recognize or fulfil demands for social recognition, citizens may experience this failure as disrespect, which can manifest in feelings of shame, anger, indignation, and disillusionment with democracy, along with changes in voting behaviour. 19. Hannah Pitkin, The concept of representation (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1972). 20. Auyero, Poor people’s politics, pp. 180–181. 21. Quoted in Elisabeth Wood, Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2003). 22. Honneth, Disrespect, p. 202. suggests that individuals seek recognition as equal members of society through a long process of securing human freedom. 23. Charles Taylor summarizes: ‘Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being’ (Charles Taylor, ‘The politics of recognition’, in Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1992), p. 25). 190 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Broadly, we argue that clientelism establishes a set of norms, practices, and relations that can allow citizens to demand social recognition from their leaders. We identify three dimensions by which they do so. First, citizens engage in political clientelism to feel seen and heard by their leaders, and to communicate and deliberate with their representatives. In his influential theory of communicative action, Habermas introduces an emancipatory sphere of action—the public sphere—where individuals enter communica- tive relationships with others to overcome domination. The ideal patron, then, is one who elevates or restores the voice of those who feel sidelined or otherwise voiceless. The dimension is hardly unique to African politics. For example, in a 2016 campaign speech, Donald Trump declared, ‘It’s going to be a victory for … the factory worker … A victory for every citizen and for all of the people whose voices have not been heard for many, many years. They’re going to be heard again.’ Through this process of communication, individuals reach the under- standing of morality and justice and engage in political decision-making free from domination. While we are agnostic as to whether these commu- nicative relationships are truly ‘emancipatory’ or public, we suggest that many individuals across Africa understand their participation in political clientelism to be a vehicle to communicate with their leaders as they seek political voice and a feeling of agency. In this regard, clientelist connections facilitate citizens’ social recognition from leaders by enacting the norms of communication and deliberation that sustain patron–client relations. More so, face-to-face contact and per- sonal connections with government representatives can provide a pathway towards defending one’s dignity and overcoming the humiliation and alien- ation that characterize many features of political life across and beyond Africa. Yet, because clientelism is based partly on demands for dignity and respect, followers may interpret a leader’s failure to listen as a seri- ous form of disrespect. In such scenarios, citizens may do more than shift their support, as instrumentalist accounts suggest, but react emotionally as well—out of anger, disappointment, or humiliation. Second, clientelism offers citizens a venue to demand respect as political agents. This is true for citizens as voters, but it is particularly pronounced among political activists and low-level brokers who seek to gain social recognition for their political work from patrons and clients alike. In this way, participation in clientelist politics can provide a sense of ‘pleasure in agency’—a ‘positive effect associated with self-determination, autonomy, 24. Jürgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere (MIT Press, MA, 1989). 25. Cited in Michèle Lamont, Bo Yun Park, and Elena Ayala-Hurtado, ‘Trump’s electoral speeches and his appeal to the American white working class’, British Journal of Sociology 68, S1 (2017), pp. S153–S180. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 191 self-esteem, efficacy, and pride’. When individuals attempt to engage in brokerage with political patrons, they exert agency in the political process as they seek to improve conditions for their communities or develop their own sense of self-efficacy. Through these efforts, individuals seek respect and dignity as well as choice in their political worlds. This provides avenues for social recognition for a class of local political entrepreneurs, who derive pleasure from acting as players in the political field. A third dimension of social recognition is the demand for social citi- zenship, which encompasses the recognition of followers as rights-bearing citizens deserving protection from harm. In many contexts, but espe- cially precarious and insecure ones, citizens rely on their patrons to secure basic social and political rights, like protecting property rights, providing employment, and securing basic services. The failure of leaders to protect such rights—seen as necessary to live a dignified life—can create feelings that leaders are not protecting them from harm. This claim is similar to the argument that economic vulnerability drives clientelism. Our theory of social recognition, however, emphasizes the importance of leaders demon- strating care and concern—beyond or in addition to actually providing goods and services that mitigate vulnerability. Social recognition is, therefore, a mechanism to claim rights to social citizenship, including goods from the state, rights to land and property, political and civil protections, and the right to dignity. Even though clien- telism’s reciprocal exchanges often take on a private dimension, citizens articulate the demand for goods and services in moral terms that highlight the state’s obligation to deliver. This forms part of an emerging discourse 30 31 that situates claims for basic services, like toilets or electricity, within a broader narrative about social citizenship. These three dimensions are summarized in Table 1. Importantly, the theory we have outlined here is not an endorsement of clientelism. Rather, in a structural context of inequality and powerless- ness, participation in clientelism provides an avenue for citizens to pursue recognition as dignified human beings—as much as it offers an opportunity to seek clientelism’s core attributes of material benefits or fulfilling social norms. We highlight, however, that leaders often fall short in supplying such 26. Wood, Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador, p. 235. 27. Kathleen Klaus, Political violence in Kenya: Land, elections, and claim-making (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2020). 28. Bobonis et al., ‘Vulnerability and clientelism’. 29. T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and social class (Polity Press, New York, NY, 1950). 30. Brenda Chalfin, ‘Public things, excremental politics, and the infrastructure of bare life in Ghana’s city of Tema’, American Ethnologist 41, 1 (2014), pp. 92–109. 31. Lauren M. MacLean, George M. Bob-Milliar, Elizabeth Baldwin, and Elisa Dickey, ‘The construction of citizenship and the public provision of electricity during the 2014 World Cup in Ghana’, Journal of Modern African Studies 54, 4 (2016), pp. 555–590. 192 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Table 1 Three dimensions of social recognition. Expectation of social Absence of social Dimension recognition recognition Potential outcomes Feeling seen and Leaders take Leaders do not Feeling forgotten heard time to listen visit/listen to and voiceless. (for example, to constituent communities. Ghana) concerns. Respect as political Leaders recognize No acknowledge- Feeling disre- agents the hard work ment of brokers’ spected and (for example, and sacrifice of work/sacrifices. exploited. Senegal) low-level brokers. Social citizenship Leaders recognize Leaders harm or Feeling betrayed (for example, ‘the right of the fail to protect and dehumanized. Kenya) citizen to a mini- constituents (for mum standard of example, selling civilized living’. land; ‘failing to feed’). See footnote 29. recognition. These unmet expectations can contribute to a range of emo- tional responses, including anger, disillusionment, and resentment, that can have serious repercussions for the consolidation of democratic politics and political stability, a point we return to in the conclusion. Research design and methods We develop these theoretical insights from ethnography, interviews, and focus groups conducted over several years of field research in Ghana, Senegal, and Kenya. All three countries have established histories of com- petitive, multi-party elections and widespread clientelism. Senegal has long been upheld as an exemplar of a clientelist state, with a politician’s viability dependent on their ability to cultivate personalized bases of power. Brokers around the country try to deliver votes in an effort to signal com- munity deservingness of patronage spoils. Clientelism remains similarly 32. See the online methodological appendix for details on data collection and a discussion of the diverse methods employed across cases. 33. Ghana has had relatively free, fair, and competitive elections since 1996. Kenya has had multi-party elections since 1992, though marked by violence. Senegal has held multi-party elections since the 1970s with the first party turnover in 2000. 34. A distinctive feature of Senegalese clientelism is the role played by the country’s promi- nent Sufi brotherhoods, which have traditionally served as both broker and patron, linking the state to society and vice versa (Linda Beck, Brokering democracy in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2008)). DEMANDING RECOGNITION 193 Table 2 Case comparison. Degree of party Colonial Regime type institutionalization Ethnic diversity heritage Urban Multi-party Strong Diverse English Ghana democracy Rural Multi-party Weak Homogenous French Senegal democracy Coastal Multi-party Moderate Homogenous English Kenya democracy entrenched in Ghana, one of the continent’s most robust democracies. In our third case of Kenya, citizens engage in patronage politics to secure land claims, constituting a claim to citizenship. Citizens view the failure of leaders to protect their land as failure to protect their dignity and livelihood. Important differences exist across the cases as well. First, while Ghana provides a case of strong party institutionalization, political parties are arguably much weaker in Senegal and Kenya. Second, while coastal Kenya and rural Senegal are relatively ethnically homogeneous, urban Ghana, and Accra in particular, is ethnically diverse. Finally, while Kenya and Ghana are former British colonies, Senegal is a former French colony. We point out these similarities and differences to suggest that across distinct country contexts, the demand for social recognition emerges as a salient and consistent feature of clientelist exchanges. Table 2 summarizes these factors. Our comparative case design deviates from standard approaches to con- trolled comparisons that aim to test causal relationships. In contrast, we see our primary exercise as one of theory development. Drawing on our three cases of Ghana, Senegal, and Kenya, we focus on developing a conceptual framework for understanding why we see similar demands for social recog- nition emerge in these diverse contexts. In what follows, we use each country as a primary case for one of our three dimensions of social recog- nition articulated, but we see all three dimensions in each of our cases. They should thus not be thought of as distinct ‘types’ of social recognition 35. Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai and Sam Hickey, ‘The politics of development under compet- itive clientelism: Insights from Ghana’s education sector’, African Affairs 115, 458 (2016), pp. 44–72. 36. Martha Wilfahrt, ‘Citizen response to local service provision: Emerging democratic accountability in decentralized West Africa?’, Electoral Studies 79 (2022), pp. 1–12. 37. Mala Htun and Francesca Jensenius, ‘Comparative analysis for theory development’, in Erica Simmons and Nicholas Smith (eds), Rethinking comparison: Innovative methods for qualitative political inquiry (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2021), pp. 190–207. 194 AFRICAN AFFAIRS specific to one country or another, but rather as interlocking components that vary in salience across contexts. Urban Ghana: Feeling seen and heard Political clientelism opens up spheres of communication and personal engagement between politicians and their constituents, creating space for citizens to exercise political voice and expression. Across the continent, citi- zens meet politicians at their homes and private offices, eat with them, and discuss personal challenges at community hang-out spots. Citizens value sitting down with their politicians, discussing frustrations and needs, and offering suggestions to improve politics. These are important opportunities for citizens to demand that leaders hear their concerns and serve their inter- ests. These private conversations are more than political signaling and more than adjudicating competing values of virtue. Instead, the practice of listening constitutes an act of recognition that the politician respects and cares for the citizen as a human being, highlighting the importance of the relational exchange between them. Becoming a member of a politician’s patronage network can provide a source of dignity or high standing characterized by nonhumiliation and noninfantilization. As one Ghanaian youth leader explained, ‘The youth do not want money. We do not even want jobs directly from the Member of Parliament (MP). We want the MP to lobby for us. To make a call for us. To connect us with those who matter.’ Voters want their leaders to take the time to seriously consider their needs, assist them with their daily challenges, and make the effort to help them. These demands are often characterized as patronage goods, but Ghana- ians’ constant utterances that ‘we are all human beings’ suggest that citizens’ understandings of patronage extend beyond material goods. In this way, clientelistic practices provide a means for urban Ghanaians to demand respect and treatment as dignified human beings. This is especially impor- tant for newcomers to the city. One migrant explained that when he came to Accra, he felt that he did not ‘belong here’ because the ‘constituencies are created for indigenes’. But entering the patronage networks of the local leader gave him the chance to voice his opinions. This process of inte- gration encouraged migrant residents to demand that leaders are ‘on the ground to understand’ our ‘aspirations and frustrations’. 38. Kramon, Money for votes. 39. Cheeseman, Lynch, and Willis, The moral economy of elections in Africa. 40. Josiah Ober, ‘Democracy’s dignity’, American Political Science Review 106, 4 (2012), pp. 827–846. 41. Paller Interview, Ga Mashie, Accra, 18 January 2012. 42. Paller Interview, Ga Mashie, Accra, 24 August 2022. 43. Paller Interview, Nima, Accra, 22 August 2022. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 195 Leaders are expected to engage in these interactions or risk being accused of ignoring the needs of or forgetting their constituents—both serious marks of shame. Youth often hang around when they expect a ‘big man’ to come through the community. They hope for nokofio , or something small. But the small gift is also a show of gratitude and respect for support and hard work. For many of these youth, political patrons are more than mate- rial providers: They are mentors. ‘He is my boss’, one resident explained with reference to the local opinion leader, despite not literally employing him. But these mentors are often accused of neglecting their duties once they gain office. As one resident said about the new MP with a tinge of sadness and resignation, ‘He is too busy for me right now.’ Engaging in face-to-face practices of clientelism enables leaders to over- come accusations of selfishness and absence. Face-to-face communication then is not merely a way to secure material goods or reciprocate loyalty, but rather a way to voice interests and share ideas, providing citizens ‘the pleasure of agency’ in negotiating power imbalances in otherwise precarious settings. As one leader explained, ‘When I started my job, people had wrong intentions of my work. They would attack me. But meeting [face-to-face] with residents gives me the chance to respond.’ Understanding these practices as demands for social recognition opens up the possibility for a negative emotional response if these demands are not met: A deep sense of loss, moral injury, and disrespect. This is particularly important for populations who often feel overlooked or even abandoned by the state. Citizens voiced this desire to be seen and heard across our three cases. Take, for example, how rural Senegalese interviewees speak of campaign visits by national-level politicians. These visits are interpreted locally as con- firmation of a village’s worth and membership in the national community, and village chiefs report great pride that prominent politicians came ‘all the way’ to their villages. Citizens value these personal visits, in part, because the act of a leader taking time to travel to a given village to discuss, listen, and share demonstrates that they recognize and care for the needs of con- stituents. In coastal Kenya, meanwhile, frustration over leaders who do not listen has shaped a sentiment that ‘sometimes there has to be violence for the government to listen’. 44. For a discussion of the culture of corruption in daily African politics, see Daniel Smith, A culture of corruption: Everyday deception and popular discontent in Nigeria (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2010). 45. Paller Interview, Ga Mashie, Accra, 16 June 2012. 46. Ibid. 47. Paller Interview, Nima, Accra, 22 August 2022. 48. For a discussion of the symbolic importance of presidential visits, see Cédric Jourde, “‘The president is coming to visit!”: Dramas and the hijack of democratization in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania’, Comparative Politics 37, 4 (2005), pp. 421–440. 49. Klaus Interview, Kwale, Kinondo A5, 13 November 2012. 196 AFRICAN AFFAIRS Rural Senegal: Demanding respect as political agents The second dimension of social recognition that we identify is a demand for respect as political agents. Drawing on the case of rural Senegal, we focus on the ways in which low-level brokers, notably village chiefs and local politicians, engage in patron–clientelism as a vehicle to earn respect and recognition as political agents, particularly in their own communities. Interviews with low-level brokers across rural Senegal illustrate the ways in which rural intermediaries attempt to garner help and recognition for their communities through their tenuous relationships with the centre. Local brokers report with pride when they have personally met party elites, often detailing their efforts to welcome these officials—organizing large receptions, copious meals, and speeches by an array of local dignitaries. Through these interactions, rural communities seek to signal not only their support but also their value as citizens and voters. Yet, the ability of low- level rural brokers to make demands on the centre is complicated, often limited to electoral periods, when national politicians traverse the country- side or when brokers themselves travel to Dakar. Politicians’ inaccessibility is widely remarked upon; as one village chief quipped, ‘My deputy thinks he can solve our problems around a table in Dakar.’ A large part of the frustration of local brokers is their perception that they do substantial, but largely unacknowledged, work on behalf of national par- ties. As one rural mayor described his relationship with his area’s deputy to the National Assembly: ‘The real deputy is the mayor’, emphasizing that ‘we [mayors] live among the population’. Rural brokers report feeling that they carry out their end of the bargain—delivering votes and coordi- nating locally when politicians need them—only for national actors to be largely unresponsive when brokers attempt to relay community needs and sentiment upwards, rendering their efforts to exercise voice on the part of their communities unheard or unacknowledged. This generates intense disappointment. ‘The central government uses rural areas’, stated one mayor categorically, ‘they come with promises, but we never see them after the election’. Politicians know exactly what rural communities need— projects, jobs, and services—but ‘once on the road, before even leaving our 50. Beck, Brokering democracy in Africa. In contrast to the common depiction of brokers as politically nimble intermediaries, surprisingly few low-level brokers in Senegal claim strong relationships with national political figures. A minority do report lucrative relations with patrons, most notably citing ties to prominent Sufi religious leaders as the central state con- tinues to deploy patronage to maintain and expand electoral support in communities’ home to powerful marabouts. 51. See Dominika Koter, Beyond ethnic politics in Africa (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2016). 52. Wilfahrt Interview, Kaffrine Region, 25 April 2013. 53. Wilfahrt Interview, Ziguinchor Region, 8 July 2013. 54. Wilfahrt Interview, Kaffrine Region, 23 April 2013. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 197 forest, they have already forgotten us’. Patrons, in other words, do not respect local brokers’ efforts as political agents. Understanding these practices as demands for social recognition pro- vides a theoretical apparatus for making sense of the negative emotional responses that local actors report when their requests for assistance are not met: A deep sense of loss, moral injury, and disrespect. This is well illus- trated by the sense of abandon that many rural opinion leaders describe after investing considerable energy campaigning for national parties with the hope that it will benefit their communities. Take, for example, one mayor in rural Louga Department who had—to the surprise of many— won his local government for the party of newly elected President Macky Sall in the 2014 local elections. Despite paying for much of his campaign himself, the governing party, the Alliance pour la république, did nothing for his administration. ‘I should not thank the President’, the mayor argued passionately, ‘the President should thank those who got him elected’. It was not so much the personal cost that he had born—his car broke down, his horse died—the mayor stressed, but rather his sense of loss for what he thought he would gain: Respect and recognition from a powerful politician who would appreciate and acknowledge his work and sacrifice by taking his community’s needs seriously. The mayor’s complaint had mate- rial dimensions—Sall’s government had not showered him with resources to distribute—but a core dimension was about not being recognized for the time and effort he expended on Sall’s behalf. At minimum, President Sall could visit the constituency, the mayor suggested, to support the mayor’s local political and developmental efforts. This second dimension of social recognition is supported in the case of urban Ghana as well, where ‘foot soldiers’ and political activists seek recognition from politicians and citizens alike. One local political activist reported sharing information ‘from the grassroots’ with the big shots in the National Democratic Congress because it enabled him to continue his work as a social worker and because it made him feel that he was helping to ‘keep the peace’ in an otherwise poor and historically violent context. Similarly, another party worker in a migrant neighbourhood explained that he made as many ‘friends’ in the city as possible; he became a respected leader in his neighbourhood by engaging in patronage politics. Exiting from political clientelism would have prevented him from the recognition he needed to become a leader in his hometown. He placed demands on the politicians ‘at the top’ in order to gain recognition for his followers—a migrant group that had been historically marginalized in Ghanaian politics. In the rapidly changing environment with multiple authority structures and possibilities 55. Wilfahrt Interview, Tambacounda Region, 26 March 2013. 56. Wilfahrt Interview, Louga Region, 18 February 2016. 198 AFRICAN AFFAIRS for personal empowerment, political activists seek to exert their political agency and stake citizenship claims on an otherwise distant state. Coastal Kenya: Demanding social citizenship Our third dimension of social recognition is the demand for social citi- zenship, which encompasses a demand to be regarded as rights-bearing citizens and the expectation that leaders will try to protect followers from the violation of such rights, for example, from the loss of land, livelihood, dignity, and belonging. Citizens often articulate this unmet demand as the failure of leaders to provide protection, or at the very least, the failure to care. Drawing primarily on evidence from coastal Kenya, we illustrate the dynamics of this third dimension by looking at how demands for land rights constitute a claim to social citizenship and inclusion in the Kenyan state. Importantly, this demand is partly material: Households need access to land and tenure security to accumulate wealth and provide for their fami- lies. But the demand for land is more than a livelihood good; it is a demand to belong to a political community, defined by the boundaries of a local community and the Kenyan state. As one respondent in Kilifi remarks, ‘The government knows who is the rightful owner. But it pretends not to notice that even if I don’t have a title deed, I have equal rights too.’ The demand for leaders to recognize claims to full citizenship rights, including the protection and enforcement of property rights, is rooted in the area’s pervasive land tenure insecurity. By government estimates, 78 percent of residents in Kwale and 60 percent in Kilifi lack title deeds. We can trace this tenure insecurity and demand for land to the Arab- Swahili slave trade and the British colonial rule. The slave trade led to the first wave of land dispossessions, while colonial rule institutionalized land rights along racial lines, excluding most coastal residents from the right to own land. With few avenues to secure rights to land, residents entered tenancy relationships with landlords and ex-masters. Norms of political patronage have developed in this context of racialized and highly unequal relationships: Between the master and slave or the landlord and squatter. At independence in 1963, coastal residents looked to chiefs and parlia- mentarians as new sources of political power and patronage. Clientelist relationships have evolved as one of the few mechanisms for citizens to demand citizenship rights and recognition from the state. Citizens expect leaders to assist them in acquiring title deeds while advocating for a redistri- bution of land that privileges the rights of locals over the so-called outsiders. 57. Klaus Interview, Kilifi, Kijipwa-1, 20 November 2012. 58. ‘Kwale: First county development plan’ (2013); ‘Kilifi first county development plan’. 59. James Brennan, ‘Lowering the Sultan’s flag: Sovereignty and decolonization in coastal Kenya’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, 4 (2008), pp. 831–861. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 199 The right to land security—a marker of belonging—is fundamental to citizens’ understandings of social and political citizenship. Yet from the perspective of many residents, political leaders have failed on these accounts. While many coastal Kenyans have pursued patronage relationships to secure their land and elevate their status above that of squatter, the patron rarely meets these expectations. As local patrons con- tinue to fail, residents describe a new image of the patron, not as a ‘big man’ who can provide, but as a figure who is opportunistic (exploiting voters to get to parliament), deceitful (making false promises), compromised (acting as a broker to national-level elites), and predatory (taking land). Citizens describe feeling exploited and betrayed: Patrons exploit the precarious posi- tions of their followers to secure power and wealth while betraying promises to protect, turning their backs on the pain, and suffering of followers— they do not resettle squatters or evictees, help young people secure jobs, or help followers acquire title deeds. A group of elders in Likoni remark, ‘The government want[s] us as servants. That’s why they are not treating us as equals.’ Embedded in this narrative is a desire that leaders treat them as equal members of a polity rather than tenants or slaves whose labour they can extract and whose livelihoods they can dismiss. For some residents, this enduring exploitation shifts their political preferences. But for others, it motivates desires for more dramatic political change, helping to explain calls for secession as a way to end regional exploitation and a master-slave or landlord-tenant model of politics. The theme of exploitation is linked closely to the narrative of betrayal and deception. Feelings of betrayal manifest as a patron’s inability or unwill- ingness to protect followers from harm—failure to satisfy the contingent exchange. One Kilifi resident remarks, ‘Government leaders did not pro- tect me. They favored the rich man. The government does not care about poor people.’ He adds that leaders should compensate residents ‘and not evict [them] like animals’. These comments relay the pain of being treated as subhuman, as not worth saving or protecting. This frustration is echoed in the comments of a Kwale resident: ‘The perpetrators of these [evic- tions] are our own leaders; they don’t stand up for us….’ Here again, it is not only material benefits that residents seek but also a leader who advocates, even if unsuccessfully, on behalf of followers. Another Kilifi res- ident remarks, ‘There is nobody who is safe here regarding land. I live by the grace of God.’ Without political patrons who can protect them from harm, residents must rely ‘on the grace of God’ or on their own collec- tive defiance. This defiance is evident in the remarks of a Likoni resident: 60. Klaus Interview, Likoni, Focus Group, 2 December 2012. 61. Klaus Interview, Kilifi, Kijipwa-2, 20 November 2012. 62. Klaus Interview, Kwale, Ramisi-3, 12 November 2012. 63. Klaus Interview, Kilifi, Kijipwa-7, 20 November 2012. 200 AFRICAN AFFAIRS ‘Let the government bulldoze our families, let them bury us here. But we shall not leave. Let’s wait and see if it will listen to the rights of one [wealthy landlord] versus thousands of people.’ In some cases, the charge is not only that patrons fail to protect but are actively involved in inflicting harm. For example, in the Mombasa neigh- bourhood of Likoni, a respondent describes how his local leader proposed a low-cost housing development. ‘People were evicted and compensated 20000 Kenyan shillings (175US$) each, but we thought it was an idea that would benefit us in the long run, so we agreed.’ Five years later, not a single community member owns a home in the estate. For many residents, this represents the ultimate act of betrayal, encompassing a failure to pro- tect, but also a willingness of leaders to harm supporters in order to profit. When speaking about being evicted, a respondent underlines this sense of betrayal, exclaiming: ‘I never saw him when my house was torched, what kind of an MP is he?’ His remarks underlie the additional expectation that even if leaders cannot prevent harm, they should, at the very least, recognize when supporters have suffered harm. A retired nurse, also from Kilifi, emphasizes this expectation: ‘People are crying. And when someone is crying, you have to ask, “why are you crying? What is the matter with you?” That person will tell you, “I am crying because you [the leader] are doing this to me.”’ Her comments convey the expectation that a good patron should show empathy while demonstrating her conviction that the callous ambivalence of political patrons causes suffering. Like failing to ‘feed’ one’s followers, citizens interpret the intentional refusal to protect or care as violating the patron–client contract. Follow- ers provide support and votes. But in exchange, they expect their leaders to protect or, at the very least, to care about their misfortune. This fail- ure represents a form of disrespect: A refusal to recognize the dignity and humanity of one’s followers—to be reduced to ‘animals’ as a respondent above remarks. Social recognition requires that even if the patron is unable to prevent an eviction or provide a title deed, he or she must demonstrate concern and empathy. We observe demands for such ‘carework’ across our cases. In Senegal, for example, a village chief recounted proudly that after a devastating fire in a compound in his village, the new mayor paid to replace the destroyed huts with cinder-block houses. The move won the chief ’s support: ‘If all mayors were like [ours], there would be no opposition [party support] 64. Klaus Focus Group Interview, Likoni-12, 2 December 2012. 65. Klaus Interview, Likoni-3, 2 December 2012. 66. Klaus Interview, Kilifi, Kijipwa-7, 20 November 2012. 67. Klaus Interview, Kilifi, Kijipwa-WM, 25 November 2012. 68. Michael G. Schatzberg, Political legitimacy in middle Africa: Father, family, food (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2001). DEMANDING RECOGNITION 201 at all in the department of Kebemer’, he boasted. In urban Ghana, individ- uals call patrons on their personal phones to protect communities from the all-too-common evictions that characterize the city’s infrastructure boom. Politicians often rush to the scene to demonstrate care and concern. Conclusion We have presented many examples of material and non-material demands that citizens make. For scholars of African politics, these examples should sound familiar: People demand clientelistic benefits but are often disap- pointed when patrons do not deliver. Certainly, Africans seek to bene- fit materially from their relationships with patrons. But this should not obscure the demands for social recognition embedded in these relations. In this way, our argument is consistent with Young, who uses Afrobarom- eter data to show that being offered a gift or being in direct contact with one’s parliamentarian does not improve voter evaluations of parliamentar- ians in Kenya and Zambia. Instead, what seems to matter is the amount of time that the MP spends in the constituency as well as whom they visit and assist, echoing our focus on citizen desires to be heard and recognized. What is especially puzzling is that citizens continue to seek out and invest in clientelistic relationships, despite parties and politicians who continually fail to deliver material benefits. Even though citizens know that politicians are unlikely to deliver materially, the demand for social recognition helps explain why they continue to engage in clientelist politics. At best, par- ticipation in patron–client relations bestows a sense of voice, agency, and belonging. However, the failure of politicians to meet citizen demands for social recognition is consequential as well. We highlight two critical dimensions in particular. First, clientelism relies on the availability of local brokers, whose legiti- macy for both national parties and voters rests on their social embedded- ness. Yet, local brokers risk overselling candidates if they put too much hope in politicians who ignore them. One village chief in Senegal empha- sized the local reputational costs borne by brokers: This can ‘diminish one’s influence because everyone wants something from you and expects you to deliver … but if you cannot do it, people will start to think you are less powerful and less influential’. Similar dynamics are at play in urban Ghana, where leaders and politicians gain reputations by linking citizens to jobs, contracts, and other opportunities. This can lead brokers to seek social recognition in new fora. In Senegal, for example, the rapid prolif- eration of political parties allows brokers to pursue relationships with new 69. Daniel Young, ‘Is clientelism at work in African elections?’ (Afrobarometer Working Paper No. 106, Afrobarometer, Accra, 2009). 70. Wilfahrt Interview, Louga Region, 19 February 2016. 202 AFRICAN AFFAIRS political entrepreneurs. Rural elites often see new parties as an opportu- nity to have a more direct connection to new patrons who will remember and reward their early supporters. This dynamic is also apparent in Ghana, where groups try to capture the attention of their higher-ups in order to be acknowledged and recognized by party leaders. Both examples reflect the degree to which brokers, as political middlemen, pursue legitimacy as polit- ical agents, the consequences of which can encourage party proliferation while undermining broker credibility. Whether one views these changes as a boon or a bane for politics in the region, they likely carry significant—yet largely unknown—consequences. Second, uncovering the role of social recognition in patron–client dynamics can help explain shifts in political support and voting behaviour, but also a potential retreat from the democratic project altogether. In Kenya, for example, citizens tend to cast their politicians as predatory, opportunistic, and neglectful, rather than as the iconic ‘big man’ who pro- tects supporters. While it is common for citizens to feel disappointed in their patron, the particular failure or weakness of patrons in coastal Kenya may help explain a sense of political alienation, which can motivate citi- zens to abstain from electoral politics, as indicated by the coast region’s markedly low voter turnout rates. Relatedly, the perceived denial of social recognition may also motivate citizens to seek alternative forms of politi- cal and moral authority —be they charismatic religious figures, insurgent leaders, chiefs, or populist politicians—whose rhetoric or actions tap into desires for social recognition. In all three cases, we see that patron–client relations affect citizens’ emo- tions in a way that may not be legible to existing theories of clientelism. African citizens in all three of our cases articulated a sense of moral injury over the failure of their leaders to listen, make time, and demonstrate concern or appreciation. Our theory of social recognition provides a rein- terpretation of clientelism’s ubiquity in the face of non-delivery, therefore, precisely because it recognizes how clientelism enables a broader set of political practices as citizens seek moral recognition as an adjacent goal for their relationships with patrons. Through the lens of social recognition, 71. Catherine Lena Kelly, Party proliferation and political contestation in Africa: Senegal in comparative perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, UK, 2019). 72. The average voter turnout across the coast countries of Mombasa, Kwale, and Kilifi in each general election was 69 percent in 2013 (national average: 86 percent), 65 percent in 2017 (national average: 79 percent), and 49 percent in 2022 (national average: 65 percent). 73. Ellen Lust, Everyday choices: The role of competing authorities and social institutions in politics and development (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2022). 74. Tricia Bacon, ‘This is why Al-Shabab won’t be going away anytime soon’, The Washing- ton Post, 6 July 2017, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/07/06/ this-is-why-al-shabaab-wont-be-going-away-any-time-soon/> (26 April 2023); David Ander- son and Jacob McKnight, ‘Understanding Al-Shabaab: Clan, Islam and insurgency in Kenya’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 9, 3 (2015), pp. 536–557. DEMANDING RECOGNITION 203 we gain new insight into why these relations endure, when they break down, and what the ensuing consequences might be. It is in clientelism’s decay that we see the most pernicious effects on the democratic project. When citizens do not feel recognized by their politi- cal leaders, they may speak about political leadership with a deep sense of political betrayal, disappointment, and disillusionment with their leaders and democracy itself. These emotions may be strongest in the Kenyan case, but they simmer beneath the words of rural Senegalese and urban Ghanaians as well. If clientelism is a means of political communication and claim-making in a polity, then a persistent feeling of being unheard and unrecognized can explain why a ‘politics of resentment’ emerges among certain communities. Citizens might withdraw from formal politics and participate in parallel governance structures instead. This retreat from multi-party politics is not easily explained by a failure of material deliv- ery alone but rather is rooted in a failure of leaders to recognize the rights and dignity of citizens. 75. Marcel Paret, Fractured militancy: Precarious resistance in South Africa after racial inclusion (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2022). 76. Echoing Kathy Cramer, The politics of resentment (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2016).
Journal
African Affairs – Oxford University Press
Published: May 17, 2023