تلخیص
In Punjab, from the decade of eighties, with the advancement of
mechanization, there came change from traditional to market economy.
This economic change resulted in rapid population growth, improved
infrastructure, connecting the towns with rural areas, and rapid
urbanization. With the advancement of mechanization and in its result,
the social structure has changed. This change in social structure has led
to political mobilization in rural Punjab. The autonomy of the voters has
increased but it did so within vertical relationships with local landed
patrons that moved the political system towards political patronage. In
this nature of relationship, during elections, the voters through the
intervention of local patron with whom they have face to face contact,
cast votes for the candidate and then through the broker patron they get
services from upward to down ward. In this type of patron-client
relationship, the clients can be patron’s kin or biraderi members, friends
or his neighbours, landless skilled and unskilled labourers found in
agriculture and non-agriculture sectors in rural areas.
The research about the voting behavior was conducted through
participant observation in a village Jhok Bodo, District Dera Ghazi
Khan. It was found that the voters in rural South Punjab are benefit
seeking political actors. They because of targeted services delivery and
dysfunctional public institutions negotiate benefits with the politicians by
strategically gathering their kinship networks for their collective actions.
So they try to maximize their material benefits by using the power of
their votes. In this way in electoral politics of rural West Punjab,
patronage plays the major role in determining the voting behavior of the
people. The ideological commitment to political parties or programmatic
following in politics has very tiny role in determining the voting behavior
of the rural voters of West Punjab.
Muhammad Fiaz Anwar. (2018) PATRONAGE AND POLITICAL AFFILIATION: CASE STUDY OF VILLAGE JHOK BODO, DISTRICT DERA GHAZI KHAN, WEST PUNJAB, Pakistan , Volume 54, Issue 1.
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