The New Political Clientelism in the xxi Century: Colombia and Venezuela: 1998-2010

The literature on the ‘new age’ of political clientelism discusses how political parties established their clientilist networks. This article explains the inner dynamics of clientelism, specifically the role played by the state, its institutions, the government, and social policies. I compare the social policies, presidential roles, and constructed networks of the governments of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. In addition, the article provides evidence of the “new age” of political clientelism, which is based on the utilization of public policies or state institutions to form a clientelistic network in order to elect its favored candidate. The article demonstrates that such practices are highly structured in Venezuela due to the strong centralization of power in the government. By contrast, in Colombia, clientelism is less structured. However, political clientelism still focuses on obtaining the highest possible number of votes. Finally, I examine how these processes shed light on new state-citizen interactions, a re-centralization of power, and the dependency of the citizens on the state