INTRODUCTION

This book has investigated the links between ethnic and communal constituencies and clientelism in the developing world. In doing so, it has addressed several interrelated questions. Why do politicians and voters connect to each other via patron–client relationships rather than programmatic linkages? How does coethnicity facilitate these clientelistic relationships? What do regular people get out of supporting their co-ethnic elites? Why do some voters receive far more meager rewards than common narratives about “ethnic favoritism” seem to imply?

To explain some of this variation in outcomes, I have offered a theory of ethnic vote monopsonies, in which only one political leader or organization can credibly serve its co-ethnics. Ethnic networks lower transaction costs between patrons and clients, but also segment the vote market into ethnic constituencies. Some of these segments are internally competitive, while others have fallen under the political domination of a single leader. Sheltered from competition for their community members’ votes, these hegemonic leaders can act as discriminating monopsonists, picking and choosing which clients to patronize and how much to give them.

I examined a number of empirical implications of this theory in Lebanon and Yemen, two diverse societies in the Arab world where sectarian, tribal, and regional distinctions impact the day-to-day distribution of material resources. Many of Lebanon's sectarian communities are internally competitive to at least some degree, yet a dominant leader emerged in the country's Sunni community. In Yemen, meanwhile, the president and his ruling party have – or at least had, prior to the Arab Spring – developed an effective monopsony over the country's Zaydi tribesmen, while still competing for votes in the Sunni communities. Consistent with expectations, I provide evidence that members of both dominated communities – Sunnis in Lebanon, Zaydis in Yemen – tend to receive poorer services and less lucrative rewards than their counterparts in the communities that benefit from competition for their support.

REVIEWING THE SCOPE OF THE ARGUMENT

The empirics for this book center on Lebanon and Yemen: two diverse and unstable societies in the Arab world with dubious electoral institutions. Can we apply the central elements of the book's story beyond these two countries in particular, or the Arab world more generally? What are the scope conditions – to what kinds of societies do vote monopsonies apply?