clientitis
nounEtymology From client + -itis.
1
Diplomacy, Government, Politics 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.
- Their relationship with the governments in their region is usually one of warmth and understanding, often described as “clientitis” or “clientism.”1990, Iain Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations, University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN:
- 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.2009, Vera Blinken, Donald M. Blinken, Vera and the Ambassador, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 58:
1 more example
- 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.2011, John Lenczowski, Full Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy: Reforming the Structure and Culture of U.S. Foreign Policy, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 108:
- Related terms
- ambassadoritis, go native