This chapter proposes a theory of individual voter and elite behavior in “patronage democracies” which explains expectations of ethnic favoritism as an outcome of the information constraints that characterize patronage transactions in such democracies.
Situations in which observers have to distinguish between individuals under severe information constraints,
I argue, bias them toward schemes of ethnic categorization.
The voting decision in a patronage democracy is such a limited information situation. Consequently, voters are biased toward ethnic categorizations of the beneficiaries of patronage transactions.
Confronted with voter biases, I show why elites are forced to favor voters from their “own” categories in their search for office.
And voters, observing in turn that politicians help their “own,” but unaware that their own perceptual biases drive elites to adopt such a strategy, place their trust primarily in co-ethnic politicians,
leading to a self-enforcing and reinforcing equilibrium of ethnic favoritism in patronage democracies. This theory is summarized in Figure 4.1 above.