Working for the Machine
Patronage Jobs and Political Services in Argentina
12:15pm Oak 438
free and open to the public
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 fear 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 a competing politician. 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.
VIRGINIA OLIVEROS is an assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. During the 2016-2017 academic year SHE IS a visiting scholar at the Program on Democracy at Yale University.
Dr. Oliveros studies the political economy of developing countries, with a regional focus on Latin America. Her research interests include elections, clientelism, corruption, and patronage politics. Dr. Oliveros’s current research focuses on one of the mechanisms that undermines the quality of democratic politics in developing countries —the political use of public employment. In May 2013, Dr. Oliveros received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. During the 2012-2013 academic year, she was a Visiting Scholar in the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank.
For more information, contact: Tom Hayes at thomas.hayes@uconn.edu