‘The [Not So] Discreet Charm of Clientelism: Comparative Perspectives on Patron-Client Relations’ Conference

Vladimir Uspensky, Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, has taken part in an international conference on ‘The [Not So] Discreet Charm of Clientelism: Comparative Perspectives on Patron-Client Relations’, which took place on July 19-20, 2015, in Perm. The event was organized by the Perm State University Centre for Comparative History and Political Studies.

The Conference was dedicated to discussing the role of patron-client relations and informal practices in modern societies, from early modern to modernity. The conference participants, political scientists and historians, discussed the research methods and the role of informal relations in the government,  science and culture, from the perspective of various disciplines. Vladimir Uspensky presented a paper on 'Informal Ties Within Official Service Elite’, where he explains the opportunities to observe and study the relations between patrons and protégées in the sovereign’s court in 16^th century Russia in the context of the lack of sources that are commonly used to study patron-client relations in the Early modern period in Europe.