But eliminating patronage is not easy. Numerous stakeholders have a vested interest in maintaining or expanding patronage appointments. Politicians want to be able to control government, and to use public sector jobs to strengthen their political party. Sharing out patronage jobs may also be important for building coalition governments. Patronage appointments are also used as a means of state-building in divided societies (Kenny, 2014). Those individuals occupying patronage positions naturally want to maintain their jobs. Social actors such as unions or ethnic groups may have close links with the appointees and want to maintain their influence. Finally, although not said very often, governments may be able to recruit more qualified people into patronage positions than they can into poorly paid civil service jobs (Panizza et al., 2021).

Ordinary citizens are stakeholders in these patronage relationships, but are often forgotten. These citizens want governments to supply basic public services for a reasonable tax price, and they want the services delivered without any political preferences. In the case of mass patronage, placing a number of unqualified and perhaps unmotivated people in office may cause public services to falter. Citizens may therefore want to find ways to produce better governance and seek merit-based means of delivering the services.  

Citizens’ perceptions of the quality of services, and of the personnel delivering those services, may depend on political party affiliations. They may be more tolerant of poorer services if they are delivered by their own party, and may consider it important to have their fellow partisans in government positions. Further, if citizens in general trust government and believe that it and its employees are attempting to do the right thing they may be more willing to accept any losses in service quality resulting from patronage.   

A Feedback Model of Changing Patronage

Now, bearing in mind the factors that contribute to the persistence of patronage in the public sector, as well as remembering something of the experience of the countries that have been able to reduce patronage, we will present a dynamic model of that process. This model will be an initial attempt to specify the dynamics involved, but at this point cannot add any specific quantitative weights to the linkages among the variables. But it will still provide insights into the social and political processes through which patronage can be reduced.

The first question that arises in building such a model is: What factors are manipulable? Some variables that affect the adoption and retention of patronage in the public sector are beyond the control of political and administrative leaders, at least in any short-to-medium term. This persistence of background factors is true even though these variables may change during the period in which reform efforts are being implemented.   

Merilee Grindle (2012) argues that two of the more important factors explaining successful moves away from patronage systems are the presence of reform-minded leaders, and the events that make the reform possible. Many political systems have had political leaders interested in reform, but were not capable of pushing through the reforms until there was an appropriate moment—the opening of a policy window, in John Kingdon’s terms. A classic example of such an event was the assassination of President James A. Garfield in the United States, which led directly to the passage of the Pendleton Act.  

A Feedback Model for Framing Patronage Outcomes and for Supporting the Outline of Policies to Move Away from It 

In order to understand the persistence of patronage, we have sketched a conceptual feedback model to illustrate possible reasons and associated pathways to move away from patronage. Such a model will help us to detect and understand the causes and the effects that patronage may generate, and can support involved stakeholders in pursuing a shared view of the dynamic feedback structure that links patronage with government performance. This learning process may particularly help elected officials in assessing the political and social sustainability of patronage and detecting the proper time to start reforms. This model is directed at the reduction of mass patronage, rather than elite-level patronage.

The feedback model (Figure 1) provides a basis for discussing how to map relevant strategic resource and performance measures that political leaders and other stakeholders would control through a dynamic performance governance framework (Bianchi et al., 2019). Such an approach may foster the design and implementation of prompt, pervasive, and consistent performance management and governance systems that help governments and community leaders to perceive weak signals of change and their potential impact on outcomes. It is important to understand that the model maps relationships among variables, and hence can be used to explain either increases or decreases in patronage. We are using it here to demonstrate how decreases might be brought about. Figure 1-a portrays (vicious) reinforcing loops that a too intensive patronage may generate. A high patronage intensity is a major cause of short-term orientation in policy design and administration. This results from elected officials needing to satisfy the expectations of their clients, generally within the electoral mandate. Such a short-term orientation may increase political clients’ satisfaction, which strengthens their personal ties and commitments to the elected officials. This in turn increases elected officials’ satisfaction, and therefore strengthens patronage arrangements (vicious reinforcing loop R1 in Figure 1).

Reinforcing loop R1 is further boosted in the long run by two other vicious reinforcing loops. In fact, though an increasing short-term orientation in policy design and administration might perhaps insure that policy targets could be effectively met (during the electoral mandate), an excess focus on only narrow and immediate results might lead to lack of a holistic view in policy making. The poor level of outcomes and a discrepancy between that level and the achieved targets (periodically announced by politicians) is often a primary cause of a gradual decline in the level of trust in government (Van der Meer, 2018), leading to rising citizen dissatisfaction. Without political entrepreneurship [1] that would detect such social pressures and turn them into reforms improving the quality of governance and societal outcomes, mistrust in government often generates a proliferation of political parties, which further increases patronage arrangements (loop R2 in Figure 1). Also, high political satisfaction, induced by intensive patronage arrangements, systematically discourages the emergence of new political leaders who might entrepreneurially turn the social discontent into a positive force to improve the quality of governance. This implies increasing deficiencies in the political system’s responsiveness to rising pressures for reforms[2], which are systematically delayed. Two outcomes of the described pattern of behavior are a reduced quality of governance (e.g. due to poor electoral and civil service systems) and a further growth in patronage (vicious reinforcing loop R3 in Figure 1).

This description of the dynamics reinforcing patronage can, as mentioned above, be run backwards in order to reduce patronage. For example, fostering a longer time horizon in governing, more effective government, and developing policy entrepreneurs who will press for a merit system can all help to reduce levels of patronage. These changes will depend, however, on the willingness of political leaders to carry through with the decrease, and the availability of a supportive environment. 

Figure 1: Reinforcing loops associated with patronage arrangements.

Conclusions

The feedback model illustrated here is primarily intended to provide a basis for facilitating stakeholders’ discussion and learning processes on such a dynamic complex phenomenon as patronage. We believe that using such an approach may support participative processes through which not only elected officials but also local stakeholders and civil society may reflect on the structure and behavioral relationships associated with patronage and identify possible leverage points to get out of it. We hope that this model will lead to serious discussions of how and when patronage is of use in government, and how its role can be modified when appropriate.

Policy Recommendations

• Focus attention on delivering effective public services as a means of building public trust in government.
• Attempt to professionalize existing patronage employees as a possible foundation for a more merit-based public administration.

Points for Practitioners

• Mass patronage in the public sector is more of a problem than is elite patronage.
• Political parties and politicians value patronage for rewarding their supporters and building the party. Therefore, reducing patronage is difficult even though it appears virtuous.
• Building strong service delivery capacity within government is important for being able to reduce patronage.

Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, USA, and Founding President, International Public Policy Association. Carmine Bianchi is Professor of Business & Public Management at the Department of Political Sciences, and Scientific Coordinator of CED4 System Dynamics Group, University of Palermo, Italy.

[1] Such variable refers more to a natural attribute of individual political leaders than a skill that can be manipulated by adopting proper policies. However, in the long run, several factors might enhance the probability that more political leaders might display such an important attribute. For instance, such a probability might be enhanced by policies aimed at changing a society’s culture, and/or at training new generations of politicians.     

[2] It is important to remember Grindle’s argument about patronage reform at this juncture.

References

Grindle, M. S. (2012) Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Panizza, F. E, B. G. Peters and C. Ramos (2021) Political Patronage in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press).