Abstract:
The intervention of local elites is often cited as an impediment to policy implementation in
many developing countries. In this paper we present a newly collected household data set
from Punjab, Pakistan, which can be used to analyze how patron-client relationships affect
which households get access to state-provided goods and services. We find that: (i)
households report receiving active assistance both from local officials and provincial and
national politicians in accessing state services and on a range of other measures, (ii)
vulnerable households, such as landless and female-headed households, appear less likely
to receive assistance from patrons, suggesting that patronage activity could increase
inequality of outcomes, (iii) shared ‘biraderi’, or clan based kinship, between the patron
and client is not associated with an increased likelihood of reported assistance from
patrons, (iv) local officials and politicians tended to recommend candidates in the last
election and rural households were strongly convinced that the patron knew for whom
they had cast their votes for in the last election, and (v) clients from rural households meet
local officials most frequently and politicians least frequently.
