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Patron-client networks refer to personal links between the ruling political elite and their lower-status clients, who may include officials in the government or other citizens in the society who support elites. In these networks elites provide resources or protection for clients, and clients reciprocate with support and assistance.³⁵ Patrimonialism, the logic of governance associated with patron-client networks, operates under a fundamentally different, personalist logic from the rational-bureaucratic, Western-style state institutions that foreign actors typically seek to build.³⁶ Foreign actors thus often select demands or recommendations that threaten the ruling elites’ patron-client networks. Ruling elites have both a strong incentive to obstruct reforms that threaten these networks and the ability to use these same networks to privately oppose reform.

Patron-client networks can play a dominant role in societies where foreign actors pursue reforms for at least two reasons. First, patrimonialism represents a baseline form of government. Scholars of political development trace patrimonialism far back in human history. They differentiate between the historically dominant patronage-based political orders, referred to as “limited-access orders” or “extractive political institutions,” and the modern, democratic political institutions that foreign actors seek to replicate in many societies.³⁷ However, since patron-client networks appear to remain present in all societies to some degree, it may make sense to distinguish a continuum of the political influence of patronage, ranging from “neopatrimonial societies,” where patrimonialism “is the core feature of politics”; to societies with some degree of democratic practice but where patronage remains important (e.g., Russia); to liberal democracies such as the Nordic states where personal patronage plays a much smaller role.³⁸

Second, war and violence often facilitate the development of persistent patron-client networks, often associated with criminality or corruption, which transition into the postwar period. Paul Staniland notes that only insurgent groups with strong networks—including links between urban and rural areas, and connections between political leaders and military cadres—are likely to be successful in fighting and winning civil wars.³⁹ One reason such networks are important is that the groups that fight civil wars need revenue, and their networks are often developed in part to conduct illicit economic activities—such as smuggling drugs, cigarettes, or oil—to fund their operations.⁴⁰ When the war ends, the groups or organizations who fought the war often are encouraged to cease their illegal activities and transition to political parties with broad bases of support. Nevertheless, the networks and patron-client systems that developed during war typically carry over to the postwar period.⁴¹ Political leaders often emerge from leaders of the warring groups and draw on political and economic networks from the war and prewar period.⁴² The bonds between the leaders of the movement and the fighters are not easily broken or substituted, and leaders may retain an obligation to provide patronage to veterans.⁴³

There are at least four common ways in which ruling elites use their patron-client networks to maintain power. First, elites use their patron-client networks to distribute resources to supporters, especially to secure votes. Elites typically work through “brokers,” who ensure the support of larger numbers of individuals. Although direct “vote buying” may occur, providing resources to party members or to groups who might be more likely to support the party (“pork-barrel politics”) appears more common.⁴⁴ Ethnicity often offers a means for elites to identify supporters and target patronage more narrowly.⁴⁵

Second, elites can use their networks to restrict or unfairly skew electoral competition. Elites or their proxies may use blackmail, intimidation, or murder to prevent, dissuade, or harm opponents pursuing political office. Elite proxies may include private security organizations or criminal groups, or elites may be able to use their networks to manipulate state organizations, such as the police, to pursue individual, party, or group agendas.⁴⁶ Elites may also use their networks to control organizations that regulate or mediate electoral competition, such as the media or election boards.⁴⁷

Third, elites may use their networks to gather resources to enrich themselves or fund their political activities. Some parties may be able to draw on legal, locally generated financial support or may receive donations from foreign sources, such as a diaspora. Other parties may use their patron-client networks to expropriate state resources, draw proceeds from private or state-owned enterprises, or rely on connections with criminal organizations.⁴⁸

Fourth, patron-client networks help elites govern and exercise control over state institutions. Elites’ personal networks extend throughout the government and into state institutions and therefore offer elites informal channels to gather and exchange information. Even in developed societies, personal connections between senior officials and subordinates establish trust beyond formal hierarchies.

A foreign-supported reform effort can often threaten the ruling elites’ use of their patron-client networks to maintain power. Measuring or anticipating the potential threat can be challenging since patron-client networks are often secret, diffuse, and constantly evolving. Each case study assesses the threat to patron-client networks using a three-step process. The case studies first identify the ruling elites by pinpointing the main political parties within governing coalitions during the reform effort. Some case studies focus only on elites within a particular ethnic group who had the greatest potential to oppose reform.

The case studies then describe the patron-client networks that are believed to be essential to elites’ power and relevant to the particular state institution. I use interviews, investigative journalism, criminal investigations, think tank reporting, and academic writing to identify these networks. In some cases it is possible to uncover the networks of specific political parties. The case studies considering BiH, for example, draw on an account from Louis-Alexandre Berg that the leadership of the Srpska demokratska stranka, or Serb Democratic Party (SDS), in BiH in 2002 to 2006 was not as dependent on connections with wartime leaders as the prior SDS leadership.⁴⁹ Other cases draw on accounts of the general types of patron-client networks that are politically important in a given society. For example, interviewees in Kosovo asserted that each of the major parties depended on revenue from oil smuggling.⁵⁰

Finally, the case studies evaluate to what extent foreign demands or recommendations, if implemented, would indeed threaten elites’ ability to use their networks to maintain power. Reforms could threaten elite networks by restructuring an institution to reduce the influence of politically linked officials; changing recruitment or vetting to limit the ability of the ruling elite to control an institution; or strengthening a state institution in a way that would weaken elites, such as by bolstering anticorruption mechanisms. Not all reform efforts that touch on elite networks are necessarily threatening, however. To be assessed as a threat to patron-client networks, the reform must realistically impact elite networks in a way that would reduce elites’ power or influence.