Electoral volatility and clientelism are two widespread phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe. Extensive research covers their causes, functioning and consequences but we know very little about the relationship between the two. This paper aims to address this gap in the literature and analyses the extent to which the voters who change their electoral preferences in two consecutive elections are more likely to accept electoral clientelism as a political practice. The study focuses on Romania as a single-case study due to its high use of documented clientelism and to the large number of newly emerged parties in the last decade. The analysis uses individual level data from a survey conducted on a national representative sample of 4300 respondents in January 2021. It uses ordinal logistic regression to compare and contrast the effects for the 2020 local and national elections. The statistical models control for several variables that are common predictors for the acceptance of clientelism: interest in politics, knowledge about politics, media exposure and income.
