What Do Brokers Provide for Urban Slums?

Rapid urbanisation in developing countries has often resulted in slums with minimal public goods provision, where the poor rely on clientelist networks to provide for their basic needs. Using household-level data, this paper is the first to empirically document how political clientelism operates in Pakistani slums. It finds that urban brokers, unlike their rural counterparts, are unable to claim credit for public goods provision. Instead, they provide personalised and highly targeted services – such as dispute resolution and assistance with documentation. Moreover, unlike traditional clientelism, urban networks are found to be problem-solving and welfare-enhancing for slum dwellers.