WHen do politicians engage in clientelistic exchange with their voters? direct or mediated patron-client relations built on personal ties preceded the emergence of faceless bureaucracies tasked with ambitious public projects.1 yet clientelism, a seemingly ancient way of getting things done in exchange for votes, flourishes even among wealthy democracies in the twenty-first century. 2 We focus on the historical origins of trust in the state and show that they have a lasting impact on patronage. We argue that lack of trust in the state, rather than affluence, greases the wheels of patron-client linkages.3 trust, which ultimately reduces clientelism, originates in competence. Where public administration has historically failed to satisfy citizens' needs, entrenched memories of that failure lead to skepticism and deepen the reliance on personalized, clientelistic relationships today.We account for both the demand side and the supply side of clientelism. Past experiences with public administrators create reputations that shape individual expectations about state capacity, constrain

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This study analyzes twenty-four cases of occurrence/non-occurrence of mobilization in non-democratic states to determine conditions of political opportunity in high-risk authoritarian contexts. Ragin's (1987) Boolean method of qualitative comparison (QCA 3.0) is used to identify specific configurations of conditions that constitute political opportunity in non-democracies. We find that political opportunity is sensitive to conditions created by divided elites, changes in repression, media access, influential allies, and social networks. Our analysis identifies four configurations that create an opening for mobilization under authoritarian conditions. The key factors, identified by QCA in the most parsimonious model, are media access and social networks. These two factors are sufficient conditions for producing mobilization in non-democratic states.

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