PATRONAGE AND POLITICAL AFFILIATION: CASE STUDY OF VILLAGE JHOK BODO, DISTRICT DERA GHAZI KHAN, WEST PUNJAB
Keywords:
Social Change, Political Patronage, Social Structure, Kinship networks, Vote Bloc, Collective Action,, Targeted Services Delivery, Voting BehaviourAbstract
In Punjab, from the decade of eighties, with the advancement of mechanization, there came change from traditional to market economy. This economic change resulted in rapid population growth, improved infrastructure, connecting the towns with rural areas, and rapid urbanization. With the advancement of mechanization and in its result, the social structure has changed. This change in social structure has led to political mobilization in rural Punjab. The autonomy of the voters has increased but it did so within vertical relationships with local landed patrons that moved the political system towards political patronage. In this nature of relationship, during elections, the voters through the intervention of local patron with whom they have face to face contact, cast votes for the candidate and then through the broker patron they get services from upward to down ward. In this type of patron-client relationship, the clients can be patron’s kin or biraderi members, friends or his neighbours, landless skilled and unskilled labourers found in agriculture and non-agriculture sectors in rural areas.
The research about the voting behavior was conducted through participant observation in a village Jhok Bodo, District Dera Ghazi Khan. It was found that the voters in rural South Punjab are benefit seeking political actors. They because of targeted services delivery and dysfunctional public institutions negotiate benefits with the politicians by strategically gathering their kinship networks for their collective actions. So they try to maximize their material benefits by using the power of their votes. In this way in electoral politics of rural West Punjab, patronage plays the major role in determining the voting behavior of the people. The ideological commitment to political parties or programmatic following in politics has very tiny role in determining the voting behavior of the rural voters of West Punjab.
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