Clientitis

Clientitis (also called clientism or localitis) is the tendency of resident in-country staff of an organization to regard the officials and people of the host country as "clients". This condition can be found in business or government. The term clientitis is somewhat similar to the phrases "" or "going native".

A hypothetical example of clientitis would be an American Foreign Service Officer (FSO), serving overseas at a U.S. Embassy, who drifts into a mode of routinely and automatically defending the actions of the host country government. In such an example, the officer has come to view the officials and government workers of the host country government as the persons he is serving. Former USUN Ambassador John Bolton has used this term repeatedly to describe the mindset within the culture of the U.S. State Department.

An example from business would be a representative for a company living in another nation, representing that company to the host nation and other institutions in that country. A business representative suffering clientitis would defend the host country government and operating environment as if those were his employers.

The State Department's training for newly appointed ambassadors warns of the danger of clientitis, and the Department rotates FSOs every 2–3 years to avoid it. During the Nixon administration the State Department's Global Outlook Program (GLOP) attempted to combat clientitis by transferring FSOs to regions outside their area of specialization.

Robert D. Kaplan writes that the problem "became particularly prevalent" among American diplomats in the Middle East because the investment of time needed to learn Arabic and the large number of diplomatic postings where it was spoken meant diplomats could spend their entire career in a single region.

Anthony Lake argues that while clientitis is a real danger, reflexive accusations of it can deter Foreign Service Officers from providing accurate analysis to policymakers.

In the 1990s the phenomenon was seen within the State Department as being particularly acute in El Salvador, reflecting "both the polarization of the country and the highly ideological position of the United States within that polarization."

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