Party patronage in contemporary democracies: Results from an expert survey in 22 countries from five regions

Abstract

This Research Note presents a new dataset of party patronage in 22 countries from five regions. The data was collected based on the same methodology to compare patterns of patronage within countries, across countries and across world regions that are usually studied separately. The Note addresses three research questions that are at the center of debates on party patronage, which is understood as the power of political parties to make appointments to the public and semi-public sector: the scope of patronage, the underlying motivations, and the criteria on the basis of which appointees are selected. The exploration of the dataset shows that party patronage is, to a different degree, widespread across all regions. . The data further shows differences between policy areas, types of institutions such as government ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and higher, middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. It is demonstrated that the political control of policy-making and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments. However, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve the purpose of both political control and rewarding supporters in exchange for votes and services. Finally, the data shows that parties prefer to select appointees who are characterized by political and personal loyalty as well as professional competence.

Loyalty or Competence: Political Use of Performance Information and Negativity Bias

“…Research has consistently demonstrated the relevance of partisan loyalty for personnel decisions in the public sector (Bach and Veit ; Dahlström and Niklasson ; Ennser‐Jedenastik ; Fleischer ; Kopecky et al ; Moynihan and Roberts ;). In many democracies, the partisan affiliation of top public managers with the governing party or the president has been found to explain managerial survival and length of tenure (e.g., Ennser‐Jedenastik ; Epstein and O'Halloran ; John and Poguntke ; Lewis and Waterman ; Moynihan and Roberts ; Wood and Waterman ).…”

Merit, Tenure, and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence From a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic

“…In fact, according to an expert survey in 179 policy areas in 22 countries (Kopecky et al, 2016), the DR features the state with the greatest range and depth of party patronage. At the same time, in this politicized context, incremental Weberian reforms -merit examinations and bureaucratic tenure protections -have occurred in the last two decades (Schuster, 2014).…”

Civil Service Laws, Merit, Politicization, and Corruption: The Perspective of Public Officials From Five East European Countries

“…The politicization perspective hence also assumes individual‐level causal mechanisms to explain why political appointees might have an incentive to engage in corrupt behaviour and why it might breed corruption more widely in the bureaucracy. Recent research on party patronage has further demonstrated that the importance of political appointments differs within countries both across policy sectors and within institutions at senior, middle, and lower levels of the hierarchy (Kopecký et al ). Following this line of argument, we expect that the positive relation between politicization and corruption is also reflected in the perception of individual officials when they evaluate their own workplace.…”