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This paper challenges the assumption that parties and candidates with access to material benefits will distribute goods to low-income voters in exchange for electoral support. I claim that a candidate's capacity to turn to clientelistic strategies of mobilization is a necessary, but insufficient condition to explain his or her decision to use clientelism. Besides having access to material resources and a network of party activist to distribute goods to potential voters, candidates have to prefer to use clientelism to mobilize voters. In studying candidates' capacities and preferences to use clientelism, this paper provides an account of the microfoundations of political clientelism in Argentina. By combining quantitative and qualitative data at the municipal level, I find that an almost equal number of pragmatist candidates, who are capable of using clientelism prefer to turn to these strategies, and idealist candidates who, although capable, prefer not to use clientelism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]