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 at times 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.

Russia.

Russia is far less tribal than Gaza or the Middle East in general. This does not mean it is not a patronage-based society. This started early in the history of the empire. It was a relationship between the Boyars and the Serfs. Of course, the ultimate patron of this system was the Tsar. It is he, mostly it was he, that determined the social order in the Empire. Service to the Tsar meant access to resources. Whether these were human resources in the form of serfs or land. In many cases, it was both.

This power relationship between the state and the subject did not change much during the Soviet period. If anything, it got worse since it also involved rivers of blood with the gulag system. This is one thing that Americans and Westerners do not understand about the repression system. It was a way to maintain order. It is a way to maintain order to this day why the return of terror should concern us well beyond a concern for other humans.

I alluded to the system as it works with the armed forces. Now, let's talk voting. Why bother with it if you know who will win? The last election was also a loyalty test. Some Russians face dismissal from government jobs because they voted for the wrong candidate. This was part of the objective.

Full P. Eight reasons why Putin's re-election is illegitimate even under Russian laws

According to the Central Election Commission, the Kremlin boss received a record 87.29% with a record turnout of 77.44%. But these numbers have nothing to do with real elections. MO provides eight pieces of evidence that even under Russian law, Putin is an illegitimate president.

1️⃣ Illegal campaigning. The entire propaganda machine worked exclusively for Putin. Even on election day, federal channels regularly showed "candidate №1," constantly praising him. Dmitry Kiselyov gave an interview with Putin as the first story, never tired of praising him — contrary to the law 20-FZ , which considers campaigning "the dissemination of information in which information about any candidate clearly predominates in combination with positive comments." Putin was chosen under his own portraits , also contrary to the law.

2️⃣ Fraud with electronic voting. The CEC claims that on the DEG platform Putin allegedly received almost 87.5% of the votes. These numbers cannot be verified. Unlike, for example, Estonia , where every voter can make sure that his vote is counted, the DEG system is completely opaque — experts call it a "hole in the wall." Many MO readers and correspondents abroad were simply unable to vote electronically — they did not receive an SMS code for authorization for government services. Messages began to arrive only late at night, when the "elections" were over. State Services technical support was unavailable for all three days.

3️⃣ Non-admission of independent candidates. The Central Election Commission did everything to ensure that Putin had no competitors in these "elections." Boris Nadezhdin and Ekaterina Duntsova were not allowed to participate in the electoral event, although they had electoral potential — as evidenced by the huge queues of people wishing to sign for them.

4️⃣ Lack of independent observers. These "elections" set a record for the number of observers. According to Golos co-chair Stanislav Andreychuk, organizations like Golos can no longer send observers to polling stations as a result of repression. And even those independent observers who managed to get to the polling stations through the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the party began to recall en masse at the height of the elections .

5️⃣ Lack of open video surveillance. After the protests for fair elections on Bolotnaya, starting in 2012, the elections could be monitored in real time — this is how thousands of violations were identified. But in 2021, the Central Election Commission closed ordinary citizens' access to video surveillance. And during these "elections," video surveillance in territorial commissions (TECs) was generally carried out only on the last day of voting from 20:00 (that is, already during the counting of votes).

6️⃣ Voting in the occupied territories. Putin was also "elected" in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, sometimes even without Russian passports. At the same time, human rights activists reported that local residents were actually forced to vote in the "elections." People voted in the presence of military men with weapons in their hands, contrary to international law.

7️⃣ No secret voting. According to the law, the expression of will must necessarily be secret , excluding the possibility of any control over the citizen's choice. But at many polling stations there were no curtains in the voting booths, and home-based voting in the occupied regions generally took place in the presence of armed people who monitored where the voter would put a tick.

8️⃣ Coercion of state employees. According to the "Voice" movement, budgetary structures and state-owned companies in Moscow received information about which employees voted through the DEG: "Organizations are asked for insufficient employee activity and send lists of those who voted to management. DEG is a valid instrument of coercion." 450 government agencies publicly reported on their participation in the elections.

👉R &qut;Never before have we seen a presidential campaign that was so inconsistent with constitutional standards," summarize the authors of the "Voices" report.

Please pay close attention to the section on employees. After all, The Boyar was replaced by the Soviet official. These days, these soviet officials have been replaced by Siloviki. Chiefly, this was built within Putinism, where Vladimir Putin faces no consequences for his actions, starting with the Osera Cooperative.

In patronage systems, those at the top live by very different rules from those of the citizens. The term citizen is not the Western liberal concept we are all familiar with. It is more like a servant that will not question the state. It is a person who will serve, to the death, the designs of the empire. This is very different from our concept of citizen. If you were wondering why the social contract implies complete surrender to the state, this is partly one reason. By multiple means, the state discourages the kind of citizen activation you see in liberal democratic countries.

This is a critical point about Russia. It is still, by implication, a system with a Tsar, the President. It has boyars; whether these are the members of his inner sanctum or the Siloviki is immaterial. They are just different levels of nobility. Finally, it has a vast serf class that serves the state. They are encouraged to even think of a new way of doing business. The dream in the 1990s of becoming a Western Nation with Western values was stillborn.

We saw this during the so-called elections. The result was known from early in the process. We all knew Putin was going to run. We all understood that Putin would not face any meaningful opposition. This was a show to garner legitimacy to the state. I don't mean inside Russia. This is a show for the outside; never mind, we all understand the kind of game they are playing. Vladimir Putin came up with something other than that idea. And when all else fails, Russia is willing to use terror on its population. Abbas Gallymov went there. He is now describing the state under Putin like I have for some time. It is a mixture of Stalinism and Ivan the Terrible:

At this point, the European Union has decided against recognizing Putin and his victory at the polls. This is significant because it signals to the Kremlin that we know the game. This is a critical moment in our relationship with the Bear. In some ways, we are done pretending. It is also one more step towards war. I mean the kinetic phase. We have been at war for some time already.

The United States

The United States has moved on from these systems, for the most part. They still exist, to a point, at the local level. It is human nature to prefer one of your kin or clan. As much as we like to pretend, some of that remains. We can see it in the concept of social capital and why young people are told to network while in college. This is about creating those social networks that will allow them to get a job once they leave college. It is at the heart of social media like Linkedin.

However, we have mostly moved on from this pattern in certain parts of society. Why do people get tested to join the civil service, whether that is the ASVAB for the armed forces, the Postal Service Exam, or the Fire Fighting exam? All these are supposed to prevent some patronage systems from being much older than those in the United States. That they have worked, to a point, is true. It is also true that other forces are pushing these systems away from their original intent.

The fact is that some civil service jobs have been ahead of the current storm regarding minority hiring, for example. The post office has been one of those places where people could get good paying, union jobs when they could not penetrate local patronage networks because they were not white, which brings me to the country's older history. There is a danger we are heading back to those systems. It is partly one of the stakes of the upcoming presidential elections:

Some Familiar Patterns

Older societies tend to trend more towards patronage and social relations. A point has been made that Gazans don't fully function in this older system because the old tribal and clan allegiances were broken in 1948. However, there is a new system that did emerge that put some priority on the old families who were never refugees, compared to the ones pushed onto the strip. The numbers are between thirty to thirty-five percent of people who are part of the local clans.

Hamas has been trying to break the back of these groups since 2007 since many of the old clans also trend towards Fatah. That civil war was not for the faint of heart. Recent killings of the leaders of one of the northern clans that challenged Hamas are part of this old pattern. They tried to distribute food to the hungry and the needy, directly challenging the dominant role of Hamas. Granted, the war with Israel is what is helping activate some of that old conflict, but we would be fools to believe that it is because of Israel. Or, for that matter, that they were cooperating with the Israelis and betraying the people.

Some of the blame that Gazans place on Hamas for this war, the tens of thousands of deaths, and the destruction comes down to systems of patronage and who controls what. Once you are aware of this, it becomes clear how difficult the day after will be for Israel. This is not a society like Israel, and let us ignore for the moment the historic Jewish hatred going back to the battle of Khaybar. Yes, it is old, and in its modern form, it included the Mufti of Jerusalem playing footsie with Nazi Germany.

When you look at Russia, a similar ancient pattern emerges. One unfamiliar to citizens of nations living under concepts that emerged during the Enlightenment. The subservient attitudes of Russian citizens to the state are not dissimilar to those of serfs to their masters. The seventy years of the Communist regime did not remove any of this. It just replaced the Boyars with the Silovik. Putin reinforced this system, starting with his career in St Petersburg City Hall, where he used his contacts to strengthen this and protect himself from any accountability. Those stuck at the bottom of society have never known anything better. Nor did essential services like indoor plumbing come to the villages.

Life has not significantly changed in some areas of the empire for hundreds of years. People still live in primitive conditions, with access to a garden to raise chickens and plant some vegetables during the short summers. Among them are potatoes, of course. These are a staple of the Russian diet because they are relatively easy to grow, and they make good homemade vodka. These are the people who are living their best lives right now. Even at the risk of dying, contract service in the army means wages none have seen in their lives. Plus, they were trained from a young age to serve the state without question.

These patronage systems break somewhat in larger cities like Moscow and St Petersburg. This is why they are more liberal; historically, this has been the case for at least Peter the Great. This is why, after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was some hope that the system of liberal thinking and a break with patronage would finally break. Like Gaza, the system itself is pervasive. And we in the West need to understand it fully.

I grew up in a society where patronage networks are pervasive. They are, I suspect, nowhere close to Russia or Gaza. However, they allow me a window into a different way of thinking. So, when I read these concepts in other societies, this is more than just theoretical.

Mind you, and this matters. Donald Trump wants to return the country to an era before civil service protections. He sees Russia, and he likes what he sees. Patronage systems are ideal for authoritarian states. They breed conformity among the vast masses of the citizenry.