Patronage at Work: Public Jobs and Political Services in Argentina

• In Event: Frontiers of Research on Bureaucratic Politics and Management Mini-Conference: Patronage

Abstract

Conventional wisdom posits that patronage jobs are distributed to supporters in exchange for political services. But why would public employees comply with the agreement and provide political services even after receiving the job? Departing from existing explanations that are based either on the threat of punishment or feelings of reciprocity, I argue that patronage employees engage in political activities because their jobs are tied to the political survival of their patrons. Jobs held by supporters will be maintained by the incumbent but not by the opposition. Supporters, then, have incentives to provide political services to help the incumbent, which makes their original commitment to provide services a credible one. Using list and survey experiments embedded on an original survey of 1200 Argentine public employees, I show that patronage employees are indeed involved in political activities and that they believe their jobs are tied to the political success of the incumbent.

Author

• Virginia Oliveros, Tulane University