Moving Away from Patronage: A Feedback Approach

• Author: B. Guy Peters,Carmine Bianchi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740221127050
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Moving Away from Patronage:

A Feedback Approach

B. Guy Peters

1

and Carmine Bianchi

2

Abstract

Patronage appointments in government are a continuing issue in many administrative systems. Especially for countries in Latin

America and Africa patronage is considered a major impediment to developing more effective administrative systems. A great

deal has been written describing patronage and discussing the causes for patronage, but much less research has addressed the

dynamics of moving away from patronage to more merit-based systems. This paper reviews the patronage literature and then

develops a dynamic feedback model for movement away from patronage. The model links the quality of the services provided

by the government, the nature of the political party system, and levels of trust to patronage. The model uses several reinforc-

ing and balancing feedback loops to demonstrate the possible dynamics of change in administrative appointments.

Keywords

International public administration, governance, public administration, professionalism, patronage, feedback

Patronage is a common and persistent feature of public

administrative systems. All administrative systems have

some level of patronage, even those of the Scandinavian

countries which are noted for their probity (Christensen

et al., 2014). Patronage appointments permit political

leaders to populate their governments with off‌icials who

are loyal to them and their political parties. Patronage also

permits those political leaders to bring talented people into

government positions who might not want to spend their

entire career in the public sector, whether because of rela-

tively low pay, or other reasons (Panizza et al., 2019).

Patronage appointments are often conceptualized as being

purely political “hacks”(Brierly, 2020), but in some

instances, patronage is crucial for recruiting required exper-

tise, and perhaps even for accountability (Toral, 2021).

At the same time, that patronage is commonly used, it is

also commonly abused. The normative standard for public

administration is the merit-based career in civil service that

should occupy virtually all positions in the public bureauc-

racy (Peters & Pierre, 2004). Some positions, those involving

personal trust and perhaps some aspects of policy advice, can

be f‌illed through patronage appointments in an administrative

system, but the vast bulk of the public bureaucracy should be,

it is argued, recruited, promoted, and managed through merit.

Political leaders require chiefs of staff or ministerial cabinets

or policy advisors who are personally loyal as well as a large

public bureaucracy that will remain more neutral. This argu-

ment is in part culturally based, depending upon a conception

of good governance involving universalistic criteria.

This normative standard of the career of public service

has been accepted for decades, and is assumed to provide

well-qualif‌ied individuals for government, and further that

these politically neutral civil servants can serve any govern-

ment that comes to power. These civil servants are also

assumed to be able to provide fair and impartial services to

citizens. Despite that normative standard, many governments

continue to maintain large numbers of patronage appoint-

ments, and there is some evidence of backsliding by merit

systems, even in the most merit-based systems (Dahlström

& Niklasson, 2013). Some of this backsliding is more

subtle than patronage per se, but it has the same effect of

politicizing the public bureaucracy (Peters & Pierre, 2004,

2023). Especially in the Central and Eastern European coun-

tries that developed merit systems conforming to interna-

tional standards as part of the accession process to the

European Union, there has been a signif‌icant movement

back toward patronage (Kopecky et al., 2012; Peters, 2020).

In many of the countries of Latin America (Grindle, 2012;

Panizza et al., forthcoming) and Africa (Ariola, 2009;

Mutahaba & Kiragu, 2002) patronage remains endemic, as

also does in some parts of Asia (Cheung, 2005; Sobari,

2017; Peters et al., forthcoming). A signif‌icant proportion

of all public jobs available in these countries are dispersed

1

University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

2

University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

Corresponding Author:

B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA.

Email: bgpeters@pitt.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2023, Vol. 53(1) 36–48

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740221127050

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