Changing role of ‘Clientelist’ and ‘programmatiC’ linkages in Ethnic Party Support: Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh

This paper asks the following research question: ‘Do voters differentiate between ‘clientelist’ and ‘programmatic’ appeals in deciding their support for a political party?’ As a hypothesis the paper suggests that voters differentiate between them by the following three criterion: ‘Voters differentiate between clientelist and programmatic appeals as clientelist appeals are associated with patronage benefits contingent upon ethnic group membership while programmatic appeals are associated with government policy benefits not contingent upon ethnic group membership. Second, voters associate clientelist and programmatic appeals with two different levels of the prospective government - the local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) candidate and the Chief Ministerial (CM) candidate respectively. Third, voters associate ‘discretion’ in implementation of clientelist appeals as a part of the exchange while ‘discretion’ in the implementation of programmatic appeals is associated with ‘corruption’ or ‘disproportionate advantage’. This paper also highlights the difficulty of conceptually separating the role of clientelist and programmatic appeals in deciding voters’ support for a party, given the diversion of programmatic policy benefits towards ethnic supporters.