Based on newspapers, documents and policy statements of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), this paper suggests that, despite its stark contrasts both in terms of it ideological outlook and rhetoric and despite the party’s unprecedented and meteoric rise to power since December 2002, there is immense continuity in AKP-led government. This continuity is eminent both in terms of policies that are being implemented as well as the style of politics based on patronage networks and exclusionary (discretionary) practices. The first part of the paper will underscore the persistently neoliberal policies, such as privatization, deregulation and liberalization pursued by the AKP government and suggest that AKP represents continuity in Turkey’s economic liberalization story since the 1980s. Second part of the paper will suggest that since macro-level fiscal measures to relieve some of the side effects and dislocations created by these neoliberal policies were no longer available to policy makers since the end of the Import Substitution era in the early 1980s, most politicians have found it extremely convenient to expand their clientelistic and patronage networks. Three major trends have been observable, main features of which are constantly seen in the AKP government as well. One is the sudden appearance of a new class of “rich” and entourage of emerging businessmen who will inevitably challenge the “old establishment.” Second, is the ever expanding social assistance networks, through municipalities, philanthropic groups, benevolent “loyal” businessmen and, in the case of AKP in particular, Islamic charity groups. Third is the disappearance of the political economy issues from the political agenda as these issues are presumably left to the technocrats or become “veiled” by more cultural and ethnic issues such as issue of the Kurds, Islamist versus secularist controversies. The third part of the paper explores why this “neoliberal patronage politics” i.e. clientelism with fiscal discipline, has been so prevalent in Turkish politics and suggests that historically state-dependent private sector, underdeveloped welfare state based on social citizenship as well as informal nature of the overall economy have locked-in a particular type of politics based on patronage and clientelistic networks. The paper ends with the broader implications of the argument and suggests that the persistence of patronage-based politics raises series questions in terms of the quality of citizenship and democracy in the country, as it creates legitimate concerns over accountability, equality and rule of law.

This paper explores why some sectarian providers distribute welfare goods broadly, even to non-coreligionists, while others allocate services more narrowly. Focusing on Lebanon, the study compares the welfare distribution strategies of Christian, Shi’i Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Druze political parties. In Lebanon, a quintessential case of a weak state where power-sharing arrangements ensure the political salience of religion and ethnicity, welfare is a terrain of political contestation, but the distribution of welfare goods varies across parties. Many assume that sectarian providers merely “take care of their own,” ensuring the well-being of co-religionists to the neglect of others. Alternatively, some contend that sectarian parties do not exert great efforts to serve their communities because they are virtually assured the support of co-religionists in a sectarian political system. Contrary to these approaches, I argue that two key factors shape how service provision is used to build political support and, specifically, who is brought into the party or movement: first, whether a party has achieved dominance within its respective sect; and second, whether it engages in electoral, mobilizational or militia competition. Once a sectarian party has achieved dominance within its sect and when it contests elections, it plays a “double game,” shoring up a core, largely co-religionist group of supporters with broad welfare benefits while extending some types of services to marginal supporters. Conversely, when a party faces competition from other parties within its sect and when it aims to mobilize mass support or engages in militia fighting, it tends to focus services on a hard core of co-religionist supporters who may be members of militia fighter families. The research for this paper is based on data collected during multiple field research trips to Lebanon in 2004 and between 2006 and 2008 and employs multiple methods of data collection and analysis, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis, an original national survey of Lebanese citizens on access to social welfare (n=2,000), standardized open-ended interviews with representatives from political parties, religious charities, NGOs, government ministries as well as local academics, development consultants and journalists (n=157), standardized open-ended interviews with beneficiaries of social welfare programs conducted by a team of trained and well-qualified Lebanese graduate students matched with co-religionist respondents (n=135), and archival research.

What explains sub-national variation in the quantity and quality of public welfare services provided in poor developing countries? The literature on this question is suggestive at best. Explanations for differences in financial, human, and infrastructural resource allocations and the effectiveness with which they are used suggest the importance of, respectively, competition for electoral support, clientelist politics, and, to a lesser extent, donor preferences. This paper will test these competing theories by examining the spatial variation in allocations for and quality of state health services provided in Yemen, a low-income developing country with competitive local elections, powerful tribal and patronage networks, and substantial international donor investments. It exploits new geo-referenced data on the locations and funding of government health service providers in all 333 of Yemen’s districts since 1994 to the present, in addition to data on district-level electoral outcomes, tribal affiliations of local politicians, and international aid transfers for the same period; surveys on the quality of health services; and interviews with major donor agencies on aid strategies and priorities in the health sector. The study will provide a better understanding of the uneven patterns of public access to state-provided social services in a developing country context, and the relative importance of political competition, patronage, and donor factors influencing these patterns at the local level.