Clientelism, Elections, and the Dialectic of Numerical People in Northeast Brazil

The paper analyses clientelism in the Brazilian state of Piaui from the perspective of sertanejos (the people of the dry hinterlands) who developed a political ethics that according to the author is resistant to the liberal electoral model. The author argues that a particular form of clientelism practiced by the sertanejos of piaui’s interior demarcates an ethical distinction between degraded vote buying and morally upright electoral transactions with politicians. As the author argues, ethical electoral transactions do not corrupt democratic elections but rather reverse the moral damage that elections themselves cause. Ethical transactions, in this sense, reconstitute the voter’s social embedded personhood after the election had passed. In this sense, rather than vindicating clientelism, the author draws attention to social inequalities that prevent people from practicing the ethical forms of political exchange and as such, pushes for critiquing political clientelism without reproducing liberal idealizations of democratic citizenship.