Patronage systems, Authoritarian Spaces, Conformity
Why This Is Needed
We humans tend to watch events through what is familiar to us. It’s easy to look at both through a Western American lens when watching Russia and now the Middle East. It is what is utterly familiar to us. It comes with inherent blind spots. We all tend to default our analysis through lived experience or societal expectations. I admit that my experience makes watching these two societies easier because my experience is somewhat similar to what we see in Russia and Gaza. So, there is a visceral level of understanding because I heard stories growing up. Granted, I was isolated from some of the worst elements because I was an upper-class child.
In some ways, I benefited from the system.
But there is also academic work, so first, let me explain Mexico, the country I grew up in, and the subject of my master’s degree study. Mexico is a society in transition. For the last twenty-five years, it has been since a genuine multiparty democracy took form. However, the previous six years have seen a retreat from this more modern way, in some ways a Western way, of doing things. Patronage has returned, starting with the educational system. This system has rejected the use of continuing education or knowledge testing of teachers. Why? Some tests were impossible for teachers in impoverished states or rural areas. The heart of Andres Lopez Obrador’s base is precisely these states, like Tabasco.
This, of course, has led to the usual problems with patronage systems. Education quality dropped. Since who you know also implies keeping your job, we have seen rising impunity with teachers doing whatever they want in schools to the detriment of students.
After Oct 7, I also jumped with both feet into the Middle East and the Israeli Palestinian crisis. Yes, I had to park a lot of emotion, but now I can do this. And quickly, as I read Palestinian Telegram, in particular, that critical of Hamas, the parallels to some regions of Mexico of my youth and Russia promptly emerged. One reason people in the West have issues understanding these societies is that our era of patronage is over. It’s not even within lived memory. So the idea that who you know matters much more when obtaining goods and services is strange. We expect people to be able to access these goods and services with, at most, the red tape we all hate to love.
So first, let me define the term patronage; let’s use Webster for this:
The support or influence of a patron the patronage of science by universities
: kindness done with an air of superiority. Thee prince deigned to bestow his patronage on the composer.
: business or activity provided by patrons. The new branch library is expected to have a heavy patronage
The power to make appointments to government jobs especially for political advantageous his enemies from office, and use the patronage to support his policies — H. K. Beale
The distribution of jobs on the basis of patronage. The governor filled the vacated positions through patronage.
Jobs distributed by patronage in the government’s vast network of patronage
For our purposes, we are about appointments to government jobs and patronage networks. Technically, donors to colleges are patrons, or people who donate to a museum, patrons of the arts. Those still exist in the United States. But vast networks of contacts that help you find a government job, or even a private sector one, are less pervasive than they are in places like Palestine, Russia, and Mexico.
We still preserve some of this in rural areas, but it is far from the level you find in more traditional societies. It is odd to describe Russia as a traditional society, but it is still one regarding patronage.
Life
So, how did I learn about this as a young person growing up in Mexico? It is in the water there. Workers call their bosses patron or patrona. It is transparent what the nature of the relationship is. While labor protections theoretically are much better, the relationship is more one-sided than people like to admit. Over the last three decades, many of those protections in the Constitution were also weakened. Granted, firing people in Mexico, even in not right-to-work states, is much more complex, but it is still an extremely unequal relationship.
This is obvious in the public sector. It’s not who you know in the sense of social capital as we understand it in the United States. Getting a job with the fire department, the police, or even the prosecutor’s office is more about who you know and, sometimes, donations to the cause. I am being kind; we call these bribes. There are educational requirements, but these jobs depend on who you know and how you vote. Obtaining a driver’s license can also involve a bribe, though less so than it used to.
With the professionalization of the civil service, some of that is slowing down. However, an excellent parallel to US history, not near any living memory for us, is the Chicago and New York Democratic machines of the 1880s. One reason people voted for the machine was because the machine guaranteed jobs. While places like Mexico City are not that bad, some regions still have these machines in place to different degrees. These are not just PRI or Morena-based. Every party has its party machines. If Donald Trump is reelected, he promises to end civil service protections that prevent the flowering of a patronage system.
In Russia and Gaza, a complete patronage system is based on traditional clan and tribal relationships. It is this which many of us looking in have no lived experience. This lack of lived experience sometimes prevents us from understanding the whole picture.
How does this affect Gaza food aid, for example?
If you are following the issues in Gaza, you may have noticed localized hunger. And I will be transparent; it is localized. It mainly affects the north of the strip, where there are fewer supplies, but it also affects people who need to be better connected to Hamas. However, let me make this transparent: the amount of aid should be acceptable. If one is to believe COGAT, supplies are going in, and it’s not in small quantities. This is where patronage systems come in. So first, a post from Ahmed Khatib pointing to this issue with patronage:
Hamas has succeeded in deterring Gaza’s clans and prominent families from acting in any way that undermines the group’s de jure control as a governing entity. Recently, Hamas killed a significant figure in a large clan in Northern Gaza, claiming that this man and his followers were stealing aid and terrorizing the local population — while some reports believe it was due to his willingness to work with the IDF in distributing aid. Hamas explicitly and clearly warned any clan that works with the Israeli military to expect bullets to the head, labeling any form of engagement with the IDF as collaboration with the enemy. Even when the UN approached clan figures in recent days, they refused to cooperate in distributing aid to desperate civilians in Northern Gaza, arguing that they don’t want to replace the government of Gaza (in reference to Hamas) and that they don’t intend to take on a role, which they know will put them in the crosshairs of Hamas’s thugs and militias. Hamas’s intelligence and counterintelligence teams have unleashed their cyber warriors to warn against treason and betrayal by clans who would cooperate with the enemy or seek to sideline the “resistance” in Gaza.
It is important to note that the way clans operate in Gaza does not make them suitable alternatives to a governing body or entity. Their “Mukhtars” or senior figureheads mainly act as mediators in disputes and help maintain civil peace between different groups and factions in the large clan spheres and spaces. Most of these large families are “native” Gazans; as in, they’re not considered 1948 refugees (30 percent of Gazans are labeled “native” — with the Strip being their ancestral origin). Gaza’s clans, such as Dogmosh, Helles, Shawwa, Sweerky, Attallah, Abdel-Aal, Mushtaha, Sager, Abu Amra, and many others, have different forms of power and influence and are prominent in various sectors of Gazan society. They have more money, land, and resources than average families in the coastal enclave, and have had essential roles in governance and political factions. They also tend to have large stockpiles of munitions and arms (not ones used in “resistance” acts against Israel but strictly for internal purposes) that they’ve used in their fights and disputes with others.
Ironically, clans used to be a major part of Gaza’s internal instability during the days when the Palestinian Authority ruled. I remember vividly widespread armed clashes that the Palestinian police were powerless to stop. It was Hamas that reigned in those clans and violently/robustly crushed their thuggery and clipped most of their wings, ensuring almost complete obedience and compliance with the Islamist group’s rule. Part of Hamas’s popularity in Gaza actually stemmed from the group’s ability to force and institute law and order upon clans due to its iron grip that established a monopoly on violence. Unfortunately, even as Hamas has lost its administrative grip on most of Gaza during the current war, its deterrence, and ability to keep many in check remains somewhat intact, particularly as more Gazans believe Hamas will survive this war. This belief is why so many are afraid to speak out against the group or rebel against its rule — something to think about when you hear people asking, “Why don’t Gazans revolt against Hamas?”.
This means that, for the most part, neither the UN nor the Israeli military are going to effectively or sustainably be able to rely on clans as part of a day-after scheme. The only realistic provisional/transitional way to safely distribute aid is to allow an Arab peacekeeping with a clear use-of-force mandate to enter Gaza and institute the barest resemblance of law and order. This force can stabilize the Strip, pending the development of a capable Palestinian security apparatus made up mostly of Gazans to assume complete control and have a monopoly on violence. With appropriate economic & financial incentives, Jordan and Egypt are immensely capable players with deep cultural ties to the Palestinians, who can form the initial nucleus of this force.
Khatib lives in the United States and straddles both cultures. It’s easier to understand him through our Western eyes than it is to, at times, understand Gaza channels. Tribalism is familiar if you have looked at traditional societies. The relationship between the individual and the clan comes before the individual and the nation. However, there is this constant of clans and tribes. This matters. This is not a Western society. There is interaction between different groups, and you could think of them as families. There are conflicts between various clans and tribes that go back decades, perhaps longer. Some of these go to the period before Hamas came to Gaza. Some go as far back as 1948, with a social strata that starts whether you are a refugee, registered by UNWRA, or hail back to the beginning.
This means that some residents of Gaza are not refugees. They have better access to everything because that status does not taint them.
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