Monday, January 03, 2005
The politics of clientelism
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician in Britain, writes often of the lower strata of society that his practice brings him into contact with. His tales of a sizable chunk of the U.K. having slipped its moorings are lurid and fascinating - and just maybe instructive.
In Tuesday's Telegraph he uses the phrase "politics of clientelism"; and by this he is referring to the pact with the devil the government has made in giving license to rotten behavior. The definition of the phrase goes like this:
"those who misbehave will vote for you because they have grown fond of the licentiousness that you have allowed them, as will those whose livelihood depends on the mass misbehaviour whose effects they are supposed to ameliorate."
Lest we think we're above that, I would point out that a system that very much goes by this definition is virtually in place here in the U.S. Even if we don't see the displays of mass drunkenness he refers to, the superstructure that would support it seems quite well entrenched.
In Tuesday's Telegraph he uses the phrase "politics of clientelism"; and by this he is referring to the pact with the devil the government has made in giving license to rotten behavior. The definition of the phrase goes like this:
"those who misbehave will vote for you because they have grown fond of the licentiousness that you have allowed them, as will those whose livelihood depends on the mass misbehaviour whose effects they are supposed to ameliorate."
Lest we think we're above that, I would point out that a system that very much goes by this definition is virtually in place here in the U.S. Even if we don't see the displays of mass drunkenness he refers to, the superstructure that would support it seems quite well entrenched.
# posted by mds : 9:30 PM
