The view of clientelism as an abuse of state power casts doubt on the democratic credentials of highly clientelistic political systems. The question is particularly relevant for the classification of dominant party systems that heavily rely on clientelism to elicit popular support and retain a relatively open structure of participation. Knowing that clientelism is a widespread practice in modern democracies too, how do we evaluate the impact of clientelism on political competitiveness in order to sort out the position of these regimes along the lines of democracy and authoritarianism? This task requires identifying the conditions under which clientelism becomes an essentially authoritarian practice and qualifies these regimes as such. The article puts forward two propositions about the circumstances under which clientelism infringes basic democratic standards under a thin and a thick definition of democracy. Clientelism under one-party monopoly engenders authoritarianism when it thwarts and punishes the contesting voice of citizens by effectively blocking exit from its incentives and sanctions.

Economic reforms face a collective action problem: they trigger the reaction of groups that expect significant losses, while the anticipated gains are often dispersed across the population and too uncertain to animate strong popular support. This pattern may exhibit different characteristics in a clientelist economy where the affected groups are client groups under the protection of political parties. The reform agenda of the Mitsotakis government in Greece (1990-1993) illustrates that the collective action problem affects primarily the internal structure of the clientelist parties and thereby their capacity for political mobilisation. Reforms that depart from the established political equilibrium on economic policy will undermine the internal cohesion of the government party and will offer the opposition party the opportunity to strengthen its own unity and political mobilisation capacity.

How do strategies of state capture adapt to tight fiscal conditions? The paper uses a historical institutionalist approach and content analysis to study the case of Greece. Three theoreticallyrelevant patterns of institutional adaptation are unearthed: first, limited resources for state capture do indeed trigger self-limitation initiatives as expected, but these initiatives replace costly benefits with less costly ones. Second, different forms of capture have different implications for the terms of political competition. Third, there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between clientelism 2 and corruption, which becomes pronounced in the creative ways by which strategies of capture adjust to shifting opportunities and constraints. Clients are appointed in state offices and extract bribes directly from citizens. 'Client corruption' replaces extraction from the state with extraction through the state, which is less costly for the public finances: the benefit the governing party gives to its clients is the 'right' to extract rents for themselves.

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Is government contestability an integral part of the definition of democracy? The answer to this question affects the way we classify political systems in which, despite a formally open political structure, a dominant political group faces weak opposition from other political parties and civil society organizations -an indication of a low degree of government contestability. In Robert Dahl's polyarchy, contestability is an essential dimension of democracy and, consequently, oneparty dominance is classified as an 'inclusive hegemony' outside his conception of democracy. For procedural definitions of democracy, however, dominant party systems are legitimate outcomes of electoral competition provided that there have been no formal restrictions to the exercise of civil and political rights. The article examines the boundaries between democracy and authoritarianism, broadens the notion of authoritarian controls to include soft manipulative practices and explains why government contestability should be regarded as a constitutive property of democracy.The conceptual boundary separating democracy from authoritarianism requires further clarification. All definitions describe democracy 'at minimum' as a system that provides citizens with political rights which they are free to exercise in a political structure open to public participation and electoral competition. This procedural description of democracy, however, is complemented by the pluralist approach to political competition, most prominently represented in Robert Dahl's conception of democracy as polyarchy, which requires that, in addition to the existence of an inclusive structure of public participation, an elected government must face a considerable degree of political contestation generated by the activities of other political and social forces during its tenure (Dahl, 1971: 2-9,