Clientelism in politics is a characteristic phenomenon in the Western Balkans, which manifests itself in satisfying the interests of specific voters, certain private companies and religious communities.

- From my experience I see that certain persons from education or science can get what they are looking for as clients of the political party in return for a certain service they do for their needs. It includes various things, not only voting, and above all I mean participation in the organization of the political party itself. Political parties are large organizations and they need human resources to function. Some of the people as customers manage to get what they asked for, but others did not, so there is no rule that everyone gets it. The subject for me to work on the study of clientelism is due to the experience from Macedonia that in order to get something, it is necessary to be a client of the political party, that is, it is desirable to have a membership card. This was pointed out by Dr. Jovan Bliznakovski, a political scientist from ISPPI, in the show "Utrinski Pechat" on Slobodna TV.

There are different forms of clientelism, which is especially widespread in the Western Balkans much more compared to other European countries, where it was more present a few decades ago.

- The relationship between party and voter can be seen in the literature, and two conditions must be met for that. First, the party should grant the voter a certain material benefit and it is done continuously. Second, the voter returns to the party with some kind of political service, that is, voting, agitation, party activism, writing on social networks, providing lists of voters. Lately, we have witnessed such relations developing between a political party and the media, then a company, religious communities, judges, etc. A private company can give money to organize a campaign, a religious community with a statement or its representative will make a statement in support of the policy of a political party. The party is not always able to fulfill the promise given to the potential client, that is, people have done the work for the interests and needs of the party, but it could not fulfill the promise - Bliznakovski pointed out.

It can be understood that clientelism is buying votes before elections from specific voters, but in Macedonia there are examples when some things are practiced several months before elections.

- Parties and users started making transactions much earlier than the election period or almost continuously. Namely, due to the fact that laws were passed that they may not do some activities three months before elections, political parties did it before. Party hiring was a phenomenon defined as party clientelism. The then party consciously increases the number of employees in the public administration because they become reliable voters. Today, the public administration has increased a lot and it is difficult to tell them that they are not needed and must be fired. Parties are very cautious when it comes to downsizing the administration, because they would face a lot of resentment. I don't believe that we can achieve the actualization of the political determination from 2006 for a small, efficient and professional public administration. I think it is difficult and a serious social upheaval can occur, Bliznakovski pointed out.

The media are clients of the political parties under certain conditions and Macedonia has experience in this regard as well.

- Informing the media that supports the parties in power and criticizes the politics of the opposition parties is basically treated as clientelism because they receive funds supposedly for advertisements, but in fact they are campaigning for the government. It was characteristic in the past, and today such practice has been abandoned, Bliznakovski pointed out.

The whole conversation with Prof. Dr. Jovan Bliznakovski, see him in the video: