Stale Mate

Fukuyuma described clientalism as a situation where a political party doles out favours to their specific voting supporters, via money or jobs in the administration (by way of example), as an ‘evil’ that haunted Western electoral democracies in the early days.

However there’s no name for a system which has:

1. Compulsory voting

2. Entrenched parties through a preferential voting system

3. 99% of voters only concerned about ‘what’s in it for us’

4. Advanced technology allowing full prediction of voting intentions down to the discrete vote

Essentially every voter is part of the clientalistic system as are any number of non voting lobby groups.

A country determined to disappear up its own orifice, I call that. So, since we can’t call it Clientalism, how about Autism?