clientitis

English

Etymology

From client +‎ -itis.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

clientitis (uncountable)

1. (diplomacy, slang) The situation where an organization's resident in-country staff come to regard the officials and people of the host country as "clients", and thus lose touch with the norms and aims of their home country.

   Synonyms: clientism, localitis

   • 1990, Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations‎^[1], University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN:

     Their relationship with the governments in their region is usually one of warmth and understanding, often described as “clientitis” or “clientism.”

   • 2009, Vera Blinken, Donald M. Blinken, Vera and the Ambassador, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 58:

     We also learned two new words: “clientitis” and “ambassadoritis”. Clientitis is the disease of those enthralled by a host country that they promote its interests, rather than their own country's.

   • 2011, John Lenczowski, Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy: Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 108:

     In the case of diplomats, the State Department has had to wrestle with criticisms that regional specialists—say, those who concentrate on the Arab world and speak Arabic—will suffer from “clientitis”: the disease of “going native,” of developing such sympathy for the people and culture of a given region that one begins to represent its interest to America rather than vice versa.

See also

• ambassadoritis
• go native