Philosophy of Science Issues in Clientelism Research

Abstract

Abstract Clientelism concerns the distribution of resources from politicians to voters in exchange for political support. The chapter uses some current ideas from philosophy of science about the place of definitions, theories, mechanisms, holism of testing and contextual elements in explanation to address the successes and areas for improvement in the now burgeoning political science research on clientelism. We document the plurality of definitions of clientelism and show that they generally do not fit the traditional necessary and sufficient conditions notion of definitions. We argue that a plurality of definitions, definitions which are often informal in nature, is not necessarily a problem if research is cognizant of how it picks out clientelistic phenomena and does so in empirically fruitful ways. We discuss explanatory frameworks by looking at questions that are being asked, the broad type and system of causes and the specific proposed causal factors that instantiate them, and questions about evidence raised by alternative possible explanations.