12 Vlaicu 2008) and to monitor clients’ electoral choices (see, e.g., Bratton and van de Walle 1997 and Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2006). Patron-client exchanges are credible, even in the absence of collectively-organized clients, because the relationship between patrons and clients is grounded in sustained reciprocal exchange (Scott 1972), which makes them selfenforcing. Both patrons and clients value future exchanges, so the threat of withdrawing from the patron-client relationship, in the event of non-compliance, is a meaningful threat.

However, within patron-client parties, little binds patrons together or prevents them from splitting off to form new parties. Moreover, the fixed costs of unilaterally starting a party are low since patrons can always count on the support of their clients. In Benin, for example, individual politicians regularly establish and disband parties and parties have generally been small. The average age of all political parties in Benin was 10 years in 2001 – but only three years in 2012. Weakly organized, clientelist parties can persist, but then because family ties are extensive and strong, or because, in the style of charismatic parties, party leaders or their families are popular or command large voting blocs (e.g., as in Pakistan).

Patron-client parties have notably weak incentives to pursue policies that promote development because they are inherently incapable of making programmatic commitments to voters. For example, party leaders are unable to prevent patrons from pursuing policy objectives that are contrary to those advocated by the party as a whole, since patrons can easily leave. This has significant implications for public policy. Keefer and Vlaicu (2008) show that policies pursued by politicians who can make credible pre-electoral commitments to only a narrow group of voters (e.g., politicians in patron-client parties) mirror the policy choices associated in the literature with political clientelism: low public good provision relative to private good provision and high rents. Keefer (2007) shows that young democracies pursue exactly these types of policies, consistent with the hypothesis that political competitors in younger democracies are less able to make credible commitments to broad groups of citizens.

Leaders who rely on their own charisma to attract popular support also have weak incentives to introduce organizational arrangements that facilitate collective action by members. The popular appeal of such leaders emerges precisely because citizens believe that these leaders will pursue their interests. Citizens therefore do not require the reassurance that committed party members will act collectively to discipline the leader if the leader shirks.

For example, Hugo Chávez advanced significant social programs that largely benefited the poor and were not strongly conditioned on overt support for the ruling party (Hawkins 2010). His party, though, like those of other charismatic leaders, was organized around the personality of the leader, with little institutional basis of its own (Zúquete 2008, Roberts 2003). The internal organization of such parties does not impose costs on leaders if they fail to pursue redistributive policies in the future. This is because voter support for the party rests not on the credibility of the party’s commitment to redistributive policies, but on their faith in the charismatic leader’s commitment to those policies. Indeed, it is precisely because Chávez’ personal charisma was sufficient to persuade voters of his credibility that he could refrain from introducing key organizational arrangements into the _Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela_ that would allow members to act collectively to restrain leader shirking. Such parties are less likely to survive after the death of their charismatic leader (holding aside the question of the long-term financial feasibility of the leader’s program).