Definition of "clientitis"

clientitis

noun
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.
  Quotations
  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
  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, page 58
  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, page 108