Analytical framework - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 28

each other. Thereby, the relative significance of these different features for politics within
neopatrimonialism can be evaluated. 14
Personalistic and autocratic leadership is characterized by the right to rule ascribed to a
person instead of to an office. The leader rests on the loyalty of a personal network as his
power base rather than on an ideology. It leads to the undermining of formal political institu
tions by the interests of the President and his network. Ishiyama (2002: 43f) identifies perso
nalism as the core value of contemporary neopatrimonial regimes. 15
Clientelism or Patronage is defined as a long term system of perpetual and voluntary
transactions (of material goods, services or political support) between unequal persons that
serve their mutual benefit and are based on asymmetric power relations between a patron and
a client. 16 It is motivated by the respective social actors' unequal control over and access to
material and immaterial resources and based on a personal relationship between them. Often
the patron himself is a client of another patron, hence part of an extended patron client
network, a patronage network. Clientelistic networks may refer to kinship or other forms of
long established relations or construct them in order to increase legitimacy; it might however
also exist without kin relations and should not be misinterpreted as a purely traditional phe
nomenon (Clapham 1982; Gellner 1977; Spittler 1977; Lauth 1999: 66 72). Political Patronage
or Clientelism refer to a system where the connection between leaders and supporters is not
based on shared ideology, objectives or interests, but on a long term personal relationship
based on mutually beneficial transactions. Hence, political competition does not occur between
groups with different economic or political ideologies but between clientelistic networks with
out significant differences with regard to their interests, ideologies or way of organization
(Spittler 1977; Medard 1982; Lemarchand, Legg 1972). The consequences affect state bureau
cracies (e.g. general precariousness of positions, oversized agencies, low level of commitment
to formal rules) but also the general decision making which targets particularistic interests
instead of general welfare (Wimmer 2000: 133 137).
Unlike clientelism, corruption does not provide certain networks with mutually beneficial
exchanges but only provides individual benefits. In contrast to petty corruption (small scale
corruption in administrations), grand corruption aims to influence policy decisions. Endemic
corruption is defined as institutionalized corruption, i.e. corruption that is not sporadic and
considered illegitimate but rather represents an in certain respects socially accepted form of
transactions that show consolidated patterns (Lauth 1999: 73ff; Wimmer 2000: 137 146).
Though both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are in a process of political and economic trans
formation, this study approaches and classifies them not primarily as transition states (and thus
refrains from using transition theory for the analysis) but as neopatrimonial regimes. For sever
al reasons, the transition approaches does not seem to be the adequate perspective to analyze
the two countries. First, the teleological and normative orientation inherent in transition
theory: Transition is conceptualized as a process from autocracy to democracy (and for the
post socialist states also from state economy to market economy) (see e.g.
O'Donnel/Schmitter 1986, Linz/Stepan 1996, Merkel 1999). In addition to epistemological
14 As neopatrimonialism is defined precisely by the combination of these features, they are interrelated. Therefore, in
the analysis they are not measured individually. Instaed, with regard to certain variables, their combined effect is taken
into account. See ch. 5.5
15 It should be noted that Ishiyama categorizes neopatrimonial regimes as a sub-type of authoritarian regimes and not
as a hybrid regime type that transcends the democracy-autocracy categorization as this study does.
16 Strictly speaking, patronage refers to a dyadic patron-client relationship and clientelism refers to a network.
However, as the former is almost always part of a system, patronage and clientelism are difficult to separate in practice.
In addition, in the literature, both terms are usually used synonymously. Therefore, I also use them interchangeably.