Formalizing Clientelism in Kenya: From Harambee to the Constituency Development Fund

Why does clientelism persist? What determines how politicians signal responsiveness to voters and exert effort towards fulfilling campaign promises? This article explores how state capacity, legislative institutional strength, and established ideas about what politicians can do structure the political market in legislative elections. The argument herein is that campaign promises must be credible to have any currency. Therefore, programmatic campaign promises are likely to be more credible in countries with strong states and legislatures, while clientelism predominates in weak states whose legislatures cannot compel the executive branch to implement legislators’ campaign promises. Historical experience also matters in shaping shared expectations of what politicians can do and the feasible sets of credible campaign promises. I support these arguments with a historical institutionalist analysis of Kenya’s Harambee Movement and the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), as well as evidence from a nationally representative survey. Findings corroborate the claim that clientelism persists when it is the most credible means of fulfilling campaign promises. This article also shows that rising costs can precipitate legislative reforms away from clientelism – as happened with the creation of Kenya’s CDF in 2003. Overall, this article increases our understanding of the origins and persistence of clientelism in low-income states and potential avenues for reform towards programmatic politics.

Advertising communications in politics: the essence and main approaches to the study

The purpose of this work is to develop and test a definition of «advertising communications in politics». A retrospective method is used, which assumes an analysis of development of scientific approaches to the phenomenon of political advertising in the Russian political science. The result of this study is the definition of «advertising communications in politics», by which it is proposed to consider the process of transmission by a political actor to other political market participants of advertising information containing some data about this actor, their program and activitywhileusing various argumentation, as well as rhetorical, stylistic and other speech techniques, and the purpose of which is to influence the behavior of the selected electoral groups and to encourage them to commit certain targeted actions. The proposed definition allows identifying and analyzingof advertising communicationsin the digital environment with its new frameworks, such as for example posts and publications in social networks, as well as materials on the official websites of political actors. The theoretical significance of this work lies in the relevance of the proposed definition for the digital environment, as well as in the possibilityof using it for distinguishing advertising communications from PR communications, since the nature of the information transmitted in the process of communication is used as a criterion for distinction.

The Political Market and Sustainability Policy

This essay introduces the political market framework (PMF) and discusses its implications for understanding local sustainability policy. The PMF conceptualizes public policy related to sustainability as the product of exchange between governmental policy suppliers and voter and interest group policy demanders. After presenting a political market model, the role of political institutions is introduced. Institutions structure exchange relationships by determining transaction costs of searching for mutually beneficial agreements, bargaining over outcomes, and monitoring and enforcing decisions. The central implication for research is the need to account for the moderating role that political institutions play in sustainability policy decisions. A research agenda based on the PMF is advanced. The conclusion addresses the limitations of the framework as well as its implications for policy adoptions, program designs, and individual behavior.

TRANSACTION COSTS AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE SIZE OF THE ENTERPRISE AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE ECONOMY

The paper presents a discursive analysis of the use of the category of “transaction costs”. The similarity of the concepts of “transaction costs’ and “costs of the marketing” by E. Chamberlin is demonstrated. However, in the original discourse of R. Coase, transaction costs are considered as the costs of using the price mechanism associated with the market allocation of resources. The firm, as a hierarchical economic system, was an alternative allocation mechanism to the market. The factors that influence the value of transaction costs in O. Williamson’s contract theory are almost unrelated to sales and the marketing. In the discourse of J. Buchanan and M. Olson transaction costs are costs arising in the political market. For J. Buchanan, these are the “positive” costs of creating new laws that reduce the social costs associated with the production and distribution of public goods. M. Olson’s discourse addresses not only the “positive” but also the “negative” costs associated with dividing markets through government regulation. In turn, R. Coase himself, investigating the problem of social costs associated with external effects, in fact got rid of transaction costs, equating them to zero. It is this situation of “Coase’s theorem” that began to be used in the framework of the analysis methodology of the discipline “Economics and Law”. The paper proposes an interpretation of transaction costs as costs of overcoming the boundaries between heterogeneous systems, based on the discourse of E. de Soto. In this case, the prices of legality/illegality can be viewed as the transaction costs of using different economic systems.

Explaining political choice: prospects for economic theory

The goal of the article is to demonstrate the potential of the economic theory in political choice as opposed to market choice. The article analyzes the input of economic theory to analyzing political choice. The following research objectives were set: (a) to highlight the development of the modern economic theory with regard to political choice with special semphasis on studies dealing with transition nations; (b) to demonstrate relevance or irrelevance of economic voting concept under conditions of modern Ukraine; (c) to find out how the information imperfectness and its comprehension by consumers in the political market affect the resulting choice. The scope of this study extends to an individual’s choice within the political market, and a subject is its distinctiveness under conditions of transition society. It is shown that political choice is characterized by inherent irrationality that gives space to different ways of external influencing voter preferences. The author proves that the economic vote is not present in the Ukrainian political context.

Introduction

This more theoretical chapter focuses on the normative role of the government, in democratic countries with a market economy, and how that role has been tied to the prevalent view of the assumed relationship between individual citizens and their government. That view has been different in different countries. The chapter stresses the difference between choices made in and by the free market and those made through the political market. In the former, income distribution and individual liberty are important. In the political market, with one person one vote, the income of the voters should be less important. However, it often is important. Some societies place a lot of importance on individual liberty. Others give more weight to community goals. These attitudes influence government policies.