Tenancy and clientelism

Elites persist in developing countries despite democratization and development. I demonstrate that landed elites maintain political power through entrenched clientelist networks and economic dependency of rural agricultural tenants and sharecroppers. Exploiting elections during a non-democratic regime and household-level panel data from Pakistan, I show that the political transition resulted in higher sharecropping and private transfers for incumbents’ clients. I argue that sharecropping facilitates patronage and that economic transitions can affect prospects for political capture. I demonstrate that an agricultural technology change that increases the efficiency cost of sharecropping can diminish the persistence of landed elites by reducing the likelihood of landlords’ electoral success in historically landlord-dominated areas.