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20 J. Democracy 122 (2009)
Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East

handle is hein.journals/jnlodmcy20 and id is 493 raw text is: Democratization by Elections? COMPETITIVE CLIENTELISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST Ellen Lust Ellen Lust is associate professor of political science at Yale Univer- sity. She is the coeditor (with Saloua Zerhouni) of Political Participa- tion in the Middle East (2008) and author of Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions (2005). Authoritarian regimes often hold elections for decades without these contests contributing to a democratic transition. Even in countries with hegemonic authoritarian regimes-North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe, for example-voters have gone regularly to the polls, casting ballots for representatives at the local and national levels. Indeed, scholars have consistently found that authoritarian regimes that hold elections tend to last longer than those that do not. It is only in competitive authoritar- ian regimes, which already exhibit some degree of political uncertainty and potential instability, that elections appear to increase the likelihood of a stable transition to democracy.2 Why do elections often tend to reinforce rather than undermine au- thoritarian regimes, and under what conditions do they do so? Focusing on legislative elections in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this essay argues that elections provide elites and their supporters an opportunity to compete over special access to a limited set of state re- sources that they can then distribute to their clients-a process that I call competitive clientelism. By doing so, elections aid ruling elites' ability to grant special privileges to local elites, creating among con- tending elites and their followers a belief that they will have access to state resources-if not today, then in the future-and establishing an incentive structure that tends to return proregime legislatures. Far from putting pressure on the regime to democratize, elections can provide a mechanism for the distribution of patronage that reduces demands for change. Citizens in the MENA region have long participated in elections. For decades, voters have gone to the polls and cast their ballots for a variety Journal of Democracy Volume 20, Number 3 July 2009 © 2009 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press

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