WHAT CAUSES PATRONAGE REFORM? IT DEPENDS ON THE TYPE OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
| Author | CHRISTIAN SCHUSTER |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12280 |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12280
WHAT CAUSES PATRONAGE REFORM? IT DEPENDS
ON THE TYPE OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
CHRISTIAN SCHUSTER
Public employment in most developing countries is governed by political patronage. Patronage
provides many incumbents with governability and electoral advantage. What causes governments
to forsake patronage in favour of civil service reform? This article reviews scholarly explanations.
It nds that studies usefully identify diverse socioeconomic and political-institutional factors
which can affect reform incentives. The causal effects of these factors –their weight, mechanisms
and signs – are contested, however. This article partially resolves this contestation by considering
which reform studies explain: different bureaucratic structures develop asynchronouslyand feature
different determinants. Toillustrate, political competition is argued to incentivize reform to ‘blanket
in’ party appointees; or do the opposite by reducing expectations to reap longer-term state capacity
benets. Yet, ‘blanketing in’ necessitates bureaucratic job stability, while state capacity requires
merit recruitment of skilled bureaucrats – two poorly correlated reforms. The causes of patronage
reform thus depend on the type of civil service reform.
INTRODUCTION
With the rise of good governance as a development paradigm, scholars have started
paying greater attention to bureaucracies and bureaucratic development in developing
countries. Central to bureaucratic development in the developing world are civil service
reforms of patronage states (Grindle 2012). In patronage states, political power holders
have discretionary power to appoint, advance and terminate the careers of public servants
across all levels of hierarchy in the state – rather than only at top levels where democratic
control may legitimize it (Kopecky et al. 2016). As a result, public servants are often hired,
red, promoted and paid on the basis of party-political criteria.1Civil service reform of
patronage states seeks to supplant discretionary power with: merit-based recruitment and
promotion (merit); predictable rather than politicized salary progression; and job stability
protections from politically motivated dismissals (tenure) (Weber 1978; Dahlström et al.
2012a). Patronage reforms thus equate to Weberian reforms.2
That bringing about civil service reform is benecial to development is relatively
uncontested. Weberian bureaucracies have been associated with economic growth, lower
poverty, lower child mortality, reduced corruption and more foreign investment, to name
a few (Evans and Rauch 1999; Henderson et al. 2007; Dahlström et al. 2012a; Neshkova
and Kostadinova 2012; Cingolani et al. 2015; Oliveros and Schuster 2016).
Unsurprisingly,practitioners have sought to advance civil service reform. Yet,their track
record has been dismal. The WorldBank’s (2008) US$422 million annual civil service and
administrative reform lending in 2000–06, for instance, had no measurable impact on civil
service practices. Instead, patronage prevails; the proportion of developing states in which
political criteria trump merit criteria in the recruitment of public servants tops 64 per cent
(Dahlberg et al. 2013).
The poor track record of reform has been attributed to political – not technical –
obstacles (World Bank 2008). Patronage secures governing parties with an army of cam-
paign workers. Moreover, it steers state action towards electoral support for incumbents;
Christian Schuster is at the School of Public Policy,University College London, UK.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (1094–1104)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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