CHAPTER 7 RADICAL AU :1 DREAMS SOURED BY ELITE PATRONAGE: THE ROLE OF CLIENTELISM IN STEERING UK BROADBAND CAMPAIGNS $ Richard Hull ABSTRACT Purpose – This chapter describes how radical aims for community-owned broadband became compromised by the consequences of clientelism and elite patronage as some campaigners engaged in lobbying government. Design/methodology/approach – Five years of participant observation and an auto-ethnographic methodology richly describe the author’s involvement in a community broadband co-operative, various regional and national support groups and finally with a national group conducting campaigning, research and co-ordination activities for community ownership of Next Generation Access broadband. 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 $ Significant parts of this chapter are written from participant observation and an ‘auto- ethnographic’ perspective (Anderson, 2006; Humphreys, 2005) in that they recount the personal experiences of the author. Every effort has been made to use pseudonyms for all relevant people and private organisations. Any likeness between characters represented here and real people should be treated as being purely coincidental. The Third Sector Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Volume 1, 177–198 Copyright r 2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2046-6072/doi:10.1108/S2046-6072(2011)0000001020 177