Road to Connivance: Common Knowledge, Inverted Charity, and the Evolutionary Stability of Clientelistic Populism

This paper develops an integrated theoretical framework combining Pinker’s common knowledge dynamics, Maimonides’ charity hierarchy (inverted), and multilevel evolutionary game theory to explain the persistence of clientelistic populism despite observable welfare losses. When governments publicly announce non-enforcement of property rights while maintaining visible redistribution programs, they create common knowledge that enables coordinated norm collapse. This dynamic inverts Maimonides’ ladder of charity: anonymous market transactions are stigmatized as “speculation,” while public subsidies, even when undelivered, sustain electoral coalitions through hope rather than outcomes. I propose self-service clientelism as a conceptual framework describing a zero-cost extended phenotype where the state achieves redistribution via strategic omission, allowing occupants to extract resources directly from owners while the state bears no fiscal cost. Empirically, I analyze four contemporaneous cases (2020, 2026): Argentina’s 420% surge in housing usurpations, Chile’s 31% increase in informal settlements under Boric, Mexico’s one million occupied INFONAVIT homes under Sheinbaum, and Spain’s okupación epidemic under Sánchez. Despite differences in institutional quality and GDP per capita, all four exhibit identical causal sequences: ex ante public announcements create common knowledge of non-enforcement, asymmetric targeting prevents property owner coordination, and occupant coalitions consolidate through state toleration. External validation via Sowell’s historical cases (Malaysia, Uganda, Argentina, Nigeria) suggests this pattern may be evolutionarily stable across diverse contexts when property rights enforcement is weak. The framework yields testable predictions for 2026, 2030: continued occupation growth despite policy corrections, formal rental supply contraction, housing deficit persistence, and eventual government-led legalization of occupations rather than eviction. Policy implications require simultaneous intervention at three levels: restoring common knowledge via public enforcement rituals, reversing charity hierarchy inversions through voucher systems favoring anonymous market transactions, and eliminating asymmetric targeting to enable property owner collective action.