A dynamic theory on clientelism and bureaucratic development

This study constructs a model of bureaucratic development to provide theoretical foundations for weak-state traps and the stateness-first hypothesis. In our model, public goods production depends on the educational quality of bureaucrats and the quality of bureaucratic institutions. An incumbent, who will compete with a challenger in an election, can invest in institutions and implement civil service reforms that exclude clientelistic recruitment. We show that the incumbent will prefer clientelism when the inherited quality of bureaucratic institutions is low. Furthermore, the incumbent has few incentives to invest in institutions under clientelism. These results lead to dynamic complementarity between the past and present bureaucratic institutions, and the model exhibits multiple steady states. Furthermore, franchise extensions give uneducated clients further political influence and increase the value of clientelism for the incumbent. Hence, franchise extensions that occur before the bureaucratic institutions develop enough can cause a society to fall into a weak-state trap.