Paths Out of Patronage: The Political Origins of Civil Service Reforms
Successful civil service reforms are a rare occurrence in comparative and historical perspective. More often than not, efforts aimed at professionalizing the bureaucracy fail. Some proposed bills never make it to the congressional floor, while others may face unpredictable fates after discussion and approval. Among these, some remain unimplemented or unenforced. Others are designed to allow politicians to circumvent them or only apply to a very limited number of positions in the bureaucracy. However, the historical record does include some instances where successful civil service reforms have been achieved against the odds, including the transformative Pendleton Act of 1883 in the United States. This landmark legislation introduced civil service examinations, competitive promotions, and strict rules for just cause dismissal in the federal civil service. Initially applicable to just 10% of personnel, its provisions ultimately expanded to cover 80% of positions by 1932. How did the United States manage to pass such legislation and implement it successfully? How do countries crack down on patronage and establish successful civil service reforms?
Paths out of Patronage asserts how nascent democracies break with the institutional persistence of patronage and succeed at professionalizing their bureaucracies. The book presents a novel theory where the success of civil service reform is rooted in the type of patronage regime and the type of processes it sets in motion. Although all countries had some form of patronage, substantial differences in their firing practices can significantly impact the reform’s outcome. Patronage systems where rotation in office after party turnover is dominant, also known as a “spoils system,” set in motion a self-eroding process because they provide two crucial institutional conditions for political entrepreneurs to emerge and advocate for bureaucratic reform: constituencies of grievances and an appealing coalition magnet for reform. In these cases, civil service reform succeeds. However, some patronage systems do not remove employees after party turnover. Instead, a “partisan layering” personnel management system is used, which features virtually no layoffs, starting a self-reinforcing process. In these cases, public employees are the only constituency for reform, and they view it primarily as a labor issue, resulting in a weaker mobilization campaign. Without external constituencies and a powerful coalition magnet to rally different segments of the population around, entrepreneurial action does not emerge. Under these circumstances, civil service reform fails.
Drawing on the tools of comparative historical analysis, the manuscript relies on process tracing and the historical case studies of the U.S. and Argentina. It uses original archival evidence—government reports, laws, statistics, congressional debates, and records from civil service reform associations— and secondary sources. The empirical chapters demonstrate similarities in crucial aspects of initial conditions between the two countries and highlight their divergence in administrative trajectories after the rise of mass politics. The study traces the self-reinforcing and self-eroding processes in each country, reconstructing the successful process of civil service reform in the U.S. that culminated in the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883 and the recurrent failed attempts to professionalize the bureaucracy in Argentina between 1862 and 1930.
Paths out of Patronage shows that although Argentina and the U.S. had similar patronage-oriented bureaucracies in the 19th century, substantial differences in their firing practices after the rise of mass politics created different constituencies for reform. The high number of dismissals of public employees in the U.S. between the rise of Jacksonian democracy in 1828 and the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883 created a constituency of grievances of fired employees and candidates who self-selected out of applying to government jobs due to the uncertainty of tenure. The recurrent practice of firing employees after turnover favored the framing of civil service reform around the injustice of dismissals and the eradication of this practice as a pre- requisite of good government. This structure of opportunities lowered the entry bar for political entrepreneurs to capitalize on these grievances and organize a broad-based coalition for reform. They successfully united the core constituencies of dismissed employees and job applicants with additional support from businesses and women’s associations and led a national petition campaign, which proved crucial to the passage of the Pendleton Act. In contrast, in Argentina, the lack of firings meant that public employees were the only constituency for reform, and they viewed it primarily as a labor issue, resulting in a weaker mobilization campaign. Without external constituencies and a powerful coalition magnet to rally different segments of the population around, entrepreneurial action did not emerge, and support for bills on administrative reform remained slim. Under these circumstances, bureaucratic reform failed.
Why and how do citizens demand better government in the form of an efficient and effective bureaucracy? How and when do political authorities respond to these demands? In recent decades, scholarship in political science has greatly advanced our understanding of bureaucratic reform. Anchored in the U.S. case, scholars of American politics have explored the demand side of reform, particularly the role and influence of businesspeople. After industrialization, businesses demanded an efficient professional bureaucracy that provided the services necessary for commerce to thrive. Cornered, the government complied. Meanwhile, comparativists have focused on the supply side of reform and zoomed into the role of political competition and, in particular, politicians’ motivations and resources. According to this view, politicians will spearhead reform when they expect to be out of office, in order to lock in their partisans in the administration. Paths Out of Patronage builds on these perspectives and provides a joint theoretical framework that considers the supply and demand side along with their institutional scope conditions for comparative analysis. In terms of methodology, the book is innovative in its comparison of the U.S. and Latin America, challenging the notion of American exceptionalism and contributing to ongoing efforts to move away from Eurocentric theories of state development.
My book workshop is scheduled for May 2025 at Stanford's Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.