Clientelism and social trust in comparative perspective: particularism versus universalism

The study of clientelism is a complex endeavour calling for attentive analyses of the social processes implied and defined by the practices involved. I believe that an anthropological comparative approach can help to overcome some of the shortcomings of mainstream political theory, especially as far as the integration of a top-down perspective with a ground-level approach is concerned. The aim of this paper is to shed some lights into the problem whether clientelism can be tackled as a universal phenomenon, even though there is abundant anthropological evidence of its different socio-cultural connotations. I will make use of empirical data which I collected through fieldwork research in three different regional contexts: Central Eastern Europe, Southern Italy and Japan.