Abstract: Conditional government transfers to citizens distributed at the local level can turn elected, independent local elites into clientelistic vote brokers of the party controlling national government. We present this idea in a simple model and test its predictions using a large workfare program in Hungary. We show suggestive evidence that workfare is more prevalent in places where the ruling party (Fidesz) needs more votes ex ante, and quantify the total electoral impact of the workfare program during the 2014-2019 national and local election cycles using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables strategies. Our model gives a testable prediction to discern clientelism (exchange of political support for alienable private benefits) from electoral politics as usual. In the first case political support is conditional on the threat of losing the private benefit, in the latter it is not. RDD evidence confirms the presence of clientelism in the Hungarian workfare program: public work only increases the vote share of the party in national government when the government can credibly threaten local elites (independent mayors) with taking away their benefits.