Patronage and political conflict I.

Various aspects of patronage and clientship have been discussed by historians, social anthropologists and political scientists. For the modern Mediterranean world, most emphasis has been placed on the role of patrons as mediators between poor, backward and isolated regions and the central state apparatus. Local patrons with their exclusive outside contacts controlled access to the benefits which the State had to offer in the form of official positions, grants, public works, etc., and they channelled these benefits towards their followers, offering the State and its representatives loyalty, local information and votes in return. The form of the patronage phenomenon was altered with increasing state intervention, the introduction of universal suffrage and the creation of political parties, but these only introduced complexities into the system and added further layers to it; they did not fundamentally change it. Patronage took different forms, depending on the structure and culture of the society in which it was found. Patronage always acted as a counterweight to class consciousness and class conflict, but it could assume an outwardly egalitarian mode where land ownership was widely diffused and economic relationships indirect, or it could act as a buffer system segregating an élite from a labouring class via a stratum of bailiffs, middling petty bourgeois and domestic servants. Patrons, moreover, could be aristocrats or notables of obviously higher standing than their clients (though not in the modern period of different legal status), a situation quite compatible with informal personal ties; or they could be brokers more on a social level with their clients, being superior only in special political skill or knowhow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]