Mass Clientelism: Urban Growth and the Dialectic of Nation-Building in 20th Century Latin America

Abstract

Urban population growth was a causal force which profoundly shaped 20th-century Latin American politics. I argue that it did so in two main ways. First, in each of the countries examined—Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela—it gave rise to urban political relations that furthered nation-building. In the 1930s-1960s, poor peasants flocked to capital cities and formed squatter settlements. Their neighborhood-level leaders offered political support in exchange for denizen status and urban upgrades, giving rise to what I call “benevolent mass clientelism”: these intermediaries organized residents’ support behind various political elites, and the latter reciprocated with aid. This simultaneously furnished distinct kinds of political elites with a mass base and hailed discrepant fractions of the political elite into field-like alignment with one another because of their common pro-squatter orientation. Thus, during the mid-20th century, in each of these countries, clientelist relations helped fortify nation-building political elites in power. In Mexico, this helped the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) secure its dominance.

Second, however, urban growth eventually reached a tipping point after which it served to erode the political elite’s base of support and thus inclined political elites to drift apart and oppose one another. Specifically, by the 1960s-1980s, the rapid continuing growth of Mexico City—which was far more extensive than that of Lima and Caracas—generated conflicts between older and newer generations of squatters. This drove newer residents into neighborhood association leaders’ arms for protection, giving rise to what I call “bossist mass clientelism.” Whereas before, local leaders essentially channeled aid they got from politicians, now they were able to offer independent protection and were thus no longer oriented to political elites. This left them free to peel support away from the regime, which eroded the PRI’s base and contributed to its decline and fall after several decades in power.

The dissertation sustains four contributions. First, it makes a topical innovation. The human sciences focus extensively on urban growth, on the one hand, and on phenomena that occur within already-existing cities, on the other. But very little research examines the relationship between city growth and the phenomena that transpire within urban spaces, much less the macro-historical implications of those phenomena. This dissertation helps debut this topical nexus.

Second, it brings two bodies of research—the micro-scale clientelism literature and macro-scale critical state theory—into dialogue for the first time. Each compliments the other: the former elucidates how between-clients conflicts benefit political elites; the latter posits that the convergence of disparate kinds of political elites, central to nation-building, presupposes divisions among the popular classes. Combining them helps illuminate how national-level developments stem from local-level relations.

Third, it furthers an incipient methodological initiative I call “dialectical explanation”—which strikes a balance between theoretical generality and case-oriented particularity—by unearthing the non-linear relationship between urban growth and mass support for political elites, and by drawing from Marxist social theory and historical-sociological methods literature. This is one of the first book-length applications of the approach.

Finally, it makes an historical contribution. Latin America experienced the largest wave of urban growth in world history. This profoundly shaped the region’s politics. But the political development literature has not adequately registered this fact. This is the first monograph to attempt this task directly. It draws on considerable original archival evidence and the extensive existing research to these ends.