Patroni i klienci / Socjologia świata polityki, t. 2

PATRONS AND CLIENTS In this book the author, prematurely deceased, deals with the informal mechanisms and structures of political life, expressed in the phenomena of the clientelism and patronage. The author undertakes an ambitious analysis of the scope of theoretical problems referring to client-patron relations against the elementary forms of social relations. He also considers the problems of frequent presence of (hose relations, he seeks for their origins, pointing at different forms and functions performed by them in different societies. The work of the author is based on various sources from sociology, political science, social anthropology and history. The second part of the book, which was left unfinished, is composed of articles published earlier (by foreign or low-budget Polish editors). This part is an empirical analysis of clientelism and patronage in the so-called really-existing socialism, now mainly of historical value. The book presents a pioneering approach to this complex issue in Polish literature, both because of its analytical treatment introduced to the problem of clientelism, and its wide inter-disciplinary perspective. The book includes a vast bibliography, potentially of great use to investigators of informal structures and mechanisms of political life.