The Price of a Vote in the Middle East: Clientelism and Communal Politics in Lebanon and Yemen (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) by Daniel Corstange

Author:Daniel Corstange [Corstange, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

5.3PERSONALIZED POLITICS

Given the general disregard for policy promises, most parties cannot build collective brand names on the basis of their programs. Instead, they build track records as distributive machines, while individual politicians cultivate personal reputations for assisting their clients. Consequently, party loyalties tend to be weak and contingent on access to rewards and services. Many elites, in turn, affiliate only loosely with parties, while others do not bother to join them or choose to run for election under party labels.

Hence, in Lebanon, the country’s highest offices are usually filled by nonpartisans. Historically, most presidents and prime ministers have not belonged to parties, and the same was true of the speaker until after the civil war. Moreover, partisans have, historically, held less than a third of the seats in parliament, while independents accounted for the supermajority. Party representation rose from about 20 percent of deputies in the 1950s to just over 30 percent by the last pre-war elections in 1972 in what el Khazen (2002, 77–82 et passim) calls Lebanon’s “golden age of parties.” It dropped again in the post-war elections, reaching 25 percent by 2000 (el Khazen, 2000). Calling the parties “schizophrenic,” a senior official in the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections elaborated further on their lack of appeal to politicians:

Electoral programs are irrelevant in the current system. Ideological parties exist, but are hindered by this system. Here, you need a strong clientele. Political party affiliation is sometimes a hindrance. Parties control the politics of the streets, but they’re a minority in parliament.25

Consequently, many independent candidates form electoral alliances with established parties to draw on the latters’ mobilizational capacity rather than out of commitment to a shared programmatic vision. With a few, partial exceptions, party and bloc discipline is weak, and parliamentary politics revolves around shifting alliances. Most deputies, as one commentator caustically observed, “have no taste or color [here: views or principles] and lean whichever way the balance of power leans.”26

Similarly, in Yemen, many elites choose to contest parliamentary elections – and win them – as independents. In the first unity-era elections of 1993, non-affiliated candidates accounted for nearly three quarters of contestants. When aggregated countrywide, independents nearly tied the ruling party for first place in the popular vote (cf. Figure 4.3 in the previous chapter). Non-partisans actually increased their share of the popular vote in the 1997 elections; they continued to attract popular support, albeit at a more modest level, in subsequent elections. When they win, most of these independents join one of the parties’ parliamentary blocs – usually the ruling party’s – when they get to the capital.27 In explaining the lackluster performance of the parties and the continued success of independent candidates, one senior ruling party official estimated that about three quarters of the population is unaffiliated, with “no more than 20 to 30 percent … with [the opposition and the ruling party] put together.”28 That is: few people vote for partisans out of ideological commitment to a party program; a large majority choose candidates, instead, for more prosaic reasons – especially access to services and other material benefits.

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