Professor receives research funds to study clientelism in developing areas
Tina Hilgers, an assistant professor in Concordia’s Department of Political Science, has been awarded a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
A tenure-track professor, Hilgers specializes in comparative politics, developing and emerging areas, and what she calls “poor people’s politics” – the means by which individuals marginalized by various social, economic and political realities organize themselves to obtain essential resources and representation.
Hilgers will use the grant, totaling more than $116,000, to launch a three-year research project into clientelism — the act of people in developing areas selling or trading their political votes for resources, such as education and health care. A doctoral student will be helping Hilgers with the research.
“We’ll be traveling to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina to do interviews with ordinary citizens, as well as representatives of political parties and leaders of social organizations, to look at how these people organize themselves to get representation and access to resources,” Hilgers says.
“When we talk about a real democracy, we don’t want to see this sort of thing because we want people to be free to vote their conscience and really make political decisions based on information that’s available about the programs and the ideologies of the politicians running for election,” she explains. “So the question is: why is this duality happening?”
The research trips will put Concordia University and the political science department more prominently on the world map. “With the kind of traveling, conferencing and researching that one can do with this sort of money, it just leads to international networking and the name being out there,” Hilgers says. “You develop contacts with researchers from around the world and they really come to know not only us as researchers, but the institution where we work.”
Related Links:
• Department of Political Science
• Tina Hilgers
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada