Kitschelt and Wilkinson (eds.), Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (2015) offers explanations for why politicians engage in clientelistic behaviors and why voters respond. Using newly collected data on national and subnational patterns of patronage and electoral competition, we demonstrate why explanations based on economic modernization of electoral institutions cannot account for international variation in patron-client and programmatic competition. Instead we argue that interaction of economic development, party competition, governance of the economy and ethnic heterogeneity work together to determine the choices of patrons, clients and policies.