Evading the Patronage Trap: Organizational Capacity and Demand Making in Mexico

Abstract

When do organizations broadly represent the interests of their economic sectors and when do they narrowly represent the interests of members? This article investigates how agricultural and small-business organizations in Mexico make demands for programmatic policies or patronage benefits. Contrary to explanations based on the class of members, I show that the source of organizational capacity shapes demand-making strategies. Organizations that generate selective benefits internally are able to engage in programmatic policies that shape sectoral competitiveness, whereas organizations that fail to solve membership challenges internally are vulnerable to the patronage trap, a self-reproducing cycle wherein they become specialized in demand making for discretionary private goods. I generate this argument through process tracing of two agricultural organizations in Mexico. Analysis of an original survey of economic interest organizations provides broader evidence that organizational capacity is a better predictor of policy demands than social class.

How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities

“…First, prior work has explained that it is in clientelist parties' interest to provide private goods and under-supply public goods (Diaz-Cayeros et al 2016;Hicken 2011;Khemani 2015;Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007;Stokes et al 2013). Building on this insight, prior work proposes that clientelism creates various types of negative cycles, from fiscal to demand-driven traps (Bustikova and Corduneanu-Huci 2017;Fergusson, Molina, and Robinson 2020;Palmer-Rubin 2019). Some of these accounts rest on assumptions with limited empirical support, and others are compatible with the bureaucratic trap I describe here.…”

Incentives for Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment in Mexico

“…Organizations may offer desirable “services” (upper-right) to members, such as training programs, social events, or information. When organizations sustain collective action on the basis of such self-generated selective benefits, they retain greater autonomy from the state than if they depend on the intermediation of state benefits (Palmer-Rubin, 2019).…”

“…This question has its roots in classic research on organized labor, which was concerned with the question how unions and the broader labor movement balance short-term goals of recruitment and resource generation with long-term transformative goals (Lipset et al, 1956; Michels, 1915; Przeworski & Sprague, 1986; Selznick, 1949). More recent scholarship analyzes the internal traits of unions, social movements, and interest organizations that produce a more transactional culture or one that is oriented to collective interest (Andrews et al, 2010; Fox, 1992; Palmer-Rubin, 2019; Voss & Sherman, 2000). We extend these concerns to test whether organizational exposure socializes individual citizens to view future organizational participation through a lens of narrow self-interest or broad collective interest.…”

Work and Demand Making: Productionist and Consumptionist Politics in Latin America

“…The median cash transfer program in Latin America costs 0.24 percent of GDP (Holland & Schneider, 2017, 993). Further, the period corresponded with an international boom in civil society organizing that has been oriented toward consumptionist demand making, such as public services and social programs (Collier & Handlin, 2009b; Palmer-Rubin, 2019; Silva, 2009).…”