The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Latin American Central Administrations (Pitt Latin American Series) 082294720X, 9780822947202

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The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Latin American Central Administrations

Pitt Latin American Series Catherine M. Conaghan, Editor

THE PoLiTiCS oF PATronAGE APPoinTMEnTS in LATin AMEriCAn CEnTrAL AdMiniSTrATionS Edited by Francisco E. Panizza, B. Guy Peters, & Conrado ramos Larraburu

university of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2022, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publicaiton data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4720-2 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4720-X Cover design: Joel W. Coggins

Contents

vii Foreword Merilee S. Grindle xi Preface and Acknowledgments 3 Introduction: The Issue of Patronage in Latin America Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larrabaru 31 1. From Politicians to Managers: Technocratic, Postideological Patronage in Argentina, 2015–2019 Mercedes Llano 62 2. Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019 Sérgio Praça, Fernanda Odilla, and João V. Guedes-Neto 90 3. Patronage in Chile: A Process in Reconfiguration Emilio Moya Diaz and Victor Garrido 111 4. The Politicization of Professionalization: The Attempt to Reform the Public Sector in Ecuador, 2007–2017 Cecilia Sandoval 141 5. Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018 Mauricio I. Dussauge-Laguna and Alberto Casas 172 6. Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar

201 7. Patronage in a Party Government: Political Appointments under the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, 2005–2015 Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio 219 Conclusion Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larrabaru 243 Notes 253 List of Contributors 257 Index

Foreword

The Politics of Patronage in Latin America Trust and Roles in Public Administration

Merilee S. Grindle

P

atronage in the public sector has an unsavory reputation. It is regularly invoked to explain evidence of corrupt or incompetent performance by government or the capture of public bureaucracies by clientelist political parties or ambitious strongmen. It is frequently called out as a cause of poor governance in countries around the world and used to explain widespread deficiencies of growth, equity, stability, and democracy. It is almost always the rationale for reformist efforts to introduce merit-­based civil service systems as a better way to recruit qualified and appropriate people to public sector jobs and improve the activities of government. The widespread use of patronage appointments adds to a generalized expectation that where politics in public administration is present, poor choices and misuse of public goods cannot be far behind. Such easy assumptions about cause and effect, based as they are on ill repute, inhibit the capacity to observe, measure, and understand patronage and its impact on bureaucratic behavior and politics. Stripped of normative expectations, patronage is simply a method of recruitment to appoint people to nonelective positions in government, a method that can be compared with other means of filling posts in the public sector. Treated as such, the presence of patronage appointments can be separated from assumptions about the inevitability of corruption, politicization, or incompetence, as well as its association with partisanship and political control of administrative activities.

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As the authors of this important volume demonstrate, when patronage is approached as a modality of appointment, normative assumptions can be replaced by empirical investigations that, in turn, can produce significant insights about government performance and the variety of ways that public policy is designed and implemented. Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos argue clearly that diverse motivations lie behind the use of patronage and equally diverse consequences can be expected from it. They begin by reminding us that when high-­level officials make discretionary appointments to public positions, they may have a variety of goals they seek to achieve. Most basically, of course, they want to have people in advisory and administrative offices whom they trust and who have competence to achieve their objectives while in office. But the editors then ask us to drill down on the implications of expectations about trust and competence. Trust to do what, they ask, and competence to achieve what? As laid out in a lucid conceptual introduction, this book adopts a valuable framework for assessing the type of trust—­partisan or nonpartisan—­ that is anticipated in making discretionary appointments and the type of expertise—­professional or political—­that is considered to be important in selecting people to fill particular posts. Applying these dimensions to the preferences of those who control patronage, Panizza, Peters, and Ramos use the framework to lay out several distinct roles for patronage appointees. For example, some appointments can be primarily motivated by trust that appointees will faithfully carry out activities representing the programmatic objectives of a political party; others may be recruited because they are trusted to use their professional competence to advance the policy goals of an administration; others might be appointed because they help fill the public sector with partisans of a particular political party and can enhance electoral advantages; and others can be recruited because of their deep personal loyalty and the ability to act effectively for the person who appointed them, regardless of party or professional expertise. Thus, policy commitment, ideological coherence, professionalism, and personal fealty can be as compatible with patronage appointments as are corruption, incompetence, and partisan distribution of public goods. The consequences of patronage choices can be assessed by the extent to which they achieve the motivations that lie behind the selection of certain officials for particular posts in government. When numerous appointments are made with the same motivation, it is possible to assess the performance of the public sector in light of those expectations. Given the possibility of anticipating performance based on combinations of types of trust and competence, the case studies illuminate their conse-

Foreword

quences for the activities of government in seven countries in Latin America. The choice of region is an important one—­Latin America is arguably home to the political systems that are most often characterized by extensive patronage appointments. Studies of this phenomenon in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay produce some fascinating insights, from the use of patronage to overcome excessive public sector politicization in Argentina to the cementing of party and electoral advantage in Uruguay, to the introduction of higher levels of professional expertise in Peru and Mexico, to role changes in the wake of appointments in Ecuador, to variation by level of responsibility in Chile, to dual technocratic and party loyalties in Brazil. Patronage as a form of appointment to public sector jobs is found in virtually all political systems, in some cases deeply penetrating the public bureaucracy, in other cases skimming only top advisory and managerial offices. The importance of this book lies in the extent to which it opens empirical space to assess patronage as a form of recruitment and its uses as a mechanism of governance. Those who control patronage appointments may wish their appointees to demonstrate deep personal loyalty, or loyalty to a party program, or to the theories embedded in professional expertise, or to turning out the votes in the next election. Researchers are then in a position to ask how effective they have proved to be in achieving such expectations. The Politics of Patronage in Latin America presents a clear framework for understanding the causes and consequences of patronage appointments in public sectors that have a long and deep tradition of this form of recruitment to public office. It then adopts this construct in exploring seven well-­ researched cases that illuminate and deepen the analytic framework. This is a welcome contribution to the literature on the political economy of public sector bureaucracies and the comparative analysis of governance. The volume significantly enriches our understanding of the myriad roles performed by patronage appointees and shows why political systems deeply penetrated by such appointments do not always demonstrate the same consequences for stability and democracy, for the degree of corruption and incompetence in the government, for the policy preferences of public sector elites, or for the achievement of good governance. It is a book that moves the discussion of public sector politics forward in important ways that are empirically refreshing and theoretically relevant.

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Preface and Acknowledgments

T

his book represents the culmination of a collaboration spanning several years. The initial round of collaboration involved the three editors debating at some length what an appropriate framework for understanding patronage would be. Any number of options were considered before settling on the one used in this book. The focus of our discussion was on Latin America, but the ambition was also to produce a more general framework that would help to clarify some of the misconceptions about patronage appointments in the public sector, and that would facilitate more direct comparison across countries. Those initial discussions were followed by four meetings of authors for the national chapters. The first was in Montevideo, hosted by the Universidad Nacional de la República. This was followed by meetings at Escola Nacional de Administração Pública in Brasília and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and finally by a meeting at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima. These four in-­person meetings enabled the editors and authors to refine the typology being used as the framework for the study, and to strengthen the individual national chapters. And, of course, those meetings have been followed by a number of interactions between editors and authors in order to produce the final manuscript. This project was possible through the generous support from a number of sources. These include Escola Nacional de Administração Pública, Univer-

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sidad de la República, Universidad del Pacifico, London School of Economics, the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and the LSE-­FAPESP fund. We also are indebted to Merilee S. Grindle, who graciously wrote a foreword for this volume, to Daniel Buquet, Daniel Chasquetti, Adolfo Garcé, Jorge Lanzaro, Diego Luján, Juan Andrés Moraes, Hans Jürgen Puhle and Jaime Yaffé for their comments on different versions of the manuscript and to Morgan Fairless and Andreas Sorger for their editorial assistance. We believe that although this project has taken substantially longer than we might have liked, or expected, the time was well spent. This is one of the few directly comparative studies of patronage in Latin America. In addition to describing the levels and types of patronage, it also helps us to understand why patronage appointments persist in the public sector, and what difference they make for the quality of governance. Although a merit-­based administrative system remains the international standard for governments, the reality is that patronage persists, and even appears to be increasing. Therefore, grasping that reality is important for not only academics interested in public administration and governance but also the individuals responsible for providing governance to their societies.

The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Latin American Central Administrations

Introduction

The Issue of Patronage in Latin America

Francisco E. Panizza, B. Guy Peters, & Conrado Ramos Larraburu

T

his book is about the practice of patronage in Latin American public administration. By patronage we mean the political actors’ power to discretionally appoint officials in public administration irrespective of the legality of the appointment and the merits of the appointee. This practice has a long history, including in the (now) consolidated democracies. For example, British public administration prior to the 1870s was heavily populated by patronage appointments.1 In the United States the “spoils system” associated with Andrew Jackson waned only slowly after the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883. And this practice has persisted over time, and is endemic in many countries of the Global South. In contemporary governance, the conventional model of public sector employment stresses the importance of merit recruitment and an absence of political influence over the public bureaucracy. The principle of “neutral competence” is accepted as the standard by which to assess public personnel systems, for both efficiency and ethical reasons (Aberbach and Rockman 1994; Dahlström and Lapuente Giné 2017). The assumption is that hiring and promoting people because of their demonstrable abilities will result in the “best and brightest” working in government and providing high-­quality services to the public. These individuals would make their decisions on the basis of objective, legal criteria rather than politics and provide better service to the public.

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Scholars such as Merilee Grindle (2012) have pointed out that despite our admiration for merit systems in public administration, patronage remains an important and often successful means of filling posts in the public sector. It is not inherently evil, and needs to be examined carefully, as she did for ten Latin American countries. Her foundational work demonstrates the centrality of patronage for Latin American countries, even in the presence of pressures for change, but also highlights how that change can be produced. There are two major issues with the dominant focus on the merit system as the standard for employment in the public sector. The first is an empirical problem. This problem is that all administrative systems have some positions that are not allocated on the basis of merit alone. Everyone uses patronage; the questions are how much and for what purposes. Even administrative systems that have prided themselves on being merit based do have some political appointments, and the available evidence is that the number of political appointees is increasing (Hustedt and Salomonsen 2014). And in many countries of the Global South levels of patronage appointments remain high and relatively unaffected by efforts to reform government (Arriola 2009; Grindle 2012). Therefore, these appointments can have a profound impact on governance within these countries. The second issue is that patronage is not a simple concept or a single pattern of appointing people for administrative positions. Rather, there are many different ways of making these appointments and many different reasons for making the appointments. These differences occur across countries and also may occur even within the same country. For example, an appointee within the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires or Los Pinos in Mexico City may be there to assist the president of the respective country in pursuing his or her political goals. On the other hand, a trained economist in the Ministry of Finance in either country may be there as a policy expert, not a political advisor. And, as we will point out below, the appointee may be there because of his or her personal connections with a political leader or because of connections with a political party. Understanding patronage therefore requires careful research. That research must examine the tasks being performed by political appointees, and those tasks must be related to the capacities of the career civil service. We can divide the tasks performed by appointees between those that are primarily political and those that are policy focused, but within those categories there are a number of different roles that the appointees can play. And especially the political tasks should be considered as supplementing or substituting for the roles of career civil servants in governing.

INTRODUCTION

And it also requires a clear conceptualization of patronage, and its relationship with other concepts used to describe the use of political power to control elements of the state. First, we need to place the practices of patronage within a broader understanding of the politicization of the public sector (Peters and Pierre 2004; Neuhold, Vanhoonacker, and Verhey 2013). Appointing people to positions within the public sector is an important mechanism for controlling the bureaucracy, but there are other ways that, though perhaps more subtle, can also be effective. In summary, studying patronage is important for understanding how government functions in many countries, including the countries of Latin America. Without a clear understanding of the ways in which patronage is used, and its effects on governance, we are likely to make a number of false conclusions about the governments of Latin America. Perhaps most importantly, we may wrongly conclude that patronage is a manifestation of corruption, while in reality it may be a means of recruiting highly skilled individuals to work in government when they otherwise would not.

CONCEPTUALIZING PATRONAGE We define patronage appointments as the power of political actors to appoint individuals by discretion to nonelective positions in the public sector, regardless of the legality of the decision and the merits of the appointee (Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova 2012). The definition does not make assumptions about the motivations for the appointments, the roles played by appointees, their professional capabilities, or the impact of patronage appointments on the quality of public administration. It covers different modalities of patronage that can be distinguished in terms of scope, motivations, and roles and brings together two streams in the study of discretional appointments, usually described as clientelism in less-­developed and transitional political systems and as the politicization of the public administration in Western European and North American systems (Peters 2013). While there is a tendency in the literature to use the terms politicization, patronage, and clientelism interchangeably, the three concepts are analytically different. Politicization is a rather broad concept, and includes a range of mechanisms through which political actors attempt to influence public administration (Peters 2013). It can refer to the selection of appointees for positions in government on political grounds—­patronage per se—­but also to other, subtler, ways in which political actors attempt to shape the behavior of public servants (Bach, Hammerschmid, and Löffler 2020). As Kopecký et al. (2016) note, patronage includes appointments that are

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clientelist in nature as well as others in which appointments are used for purposes besides clientelist exchanges. Clientelism has been narrowly defined as the exchange of public sector jobs for electoral support (Roniger 1994; Stokes 2005; Stokes et al. 2013; González-­Ocantos and Muñoz 2017; Hicken 2011) and, more broadly, as the particularistic allocation of public resources in exchange for loyalty, services, and political support (Piattoni 2001). While the politicized and discretional nature of the appointment is a shared characteristic with clientelism, politicians make appointments for a range of motives other than electoral support, such as the need for technical advice and expertise or the use of patronage appointments as a tool of coalition management. Appointees also perform a variety of roles other than electoral brokers. These include, among others, policy design and implementation and the control of the public sector bureaucracy. Clientelism as a means of providing public jobs for electoral purposes is generally associated with lower-­level positions in government, and often in local government. This book will focus more on higher levels of employment within the public sector, and the selection of employees that may provide some political benefits, but who also may be of assistance in performing the tasks of governing. The following implications derive from our definition of patronage: 1) The patron’s discretion to appoint can result from legal dispositions as well as from informal practices. In virtually all political systems officeholders have discretion to appoint a number of politically or personally trusted personnel. In many countries, however, patronage appointments are regulated by informal rules that sidestep, bypass, distort, or simply violate established legal dispositions outright. As is often the case, and as Grindle puts it, “de facto practice trumps de jure theory” (2012, 145–46). 2) The definition considers patrons to be any political actor that has real power of appointment rather than just a legal one. 3) Patronage does not necessarily exclude merit as a criterion for personnel selection. Rather, it means that politicians have discretion to choose the criteria on which they base decisions to fill state positions rather than having it defined by competitive examinations. But neither is merit excluded from consideration when making patronage appointments. 4) The definition does not make assumptions about the relation between patronage and good governance. We conclude that patronage may have some benefits for governance, and that any normative assessment should consider

INTRODUCTION the costs and benefits of this practice in each particular political and cultural context.

MOTIVATIONS AND ROLES Scholars have identified a broad set of motivations other than clientelism for making political appointments. Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova (2012) produced an important study of party patronage and party government in European democracies that was subsequently expanded to cover twenty-­two countries from five regions (Kopecký et al. 2016). These studies consider two motivations of patrons: Control over the formulation and implementation of public policies, and reward of supporters for political services. They also classify the criteria for selecting personnel on professional, political, and personal grounds (Kopecký et al. 2016, 417). They found that the control of policymaking and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments, particularly in the low-­patronage scope cases of Western Europe. By contrast, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve both as a control and as a reward function. However, these studies fall short of providing a comprehensive analytical tool for comparative studies of patronage appointments. Arguably, their classification of modalities of patronage is too narrow to provide enough information about what the appointees actually do when given a position in the public sector. For instance, when appointments are made in order to control the policymaking process, how do appointees perform the task? By giving technical advice to their patrons in the executive, by controlling the public sector bureaucracy, or by using their political know-­how to negotiate policy initiatives through the labyrinth of power (Campbell and Peters 1988, 84)? The three roles are significantly different and require different skills. When appointments are made to reward party militants, what role are these militants expected to perform? To engage in political activism on behalf of their patrons, to mediate between the ruling party and congress, or to oversee a bureaucracy often regarded as hostile to the ruling party? Again, different roles require different skills. And we should also be aware that patronage can be used to build both party and personal loyalty. These lacunae take us back to the importance of identifying patronage roles by considering the roles played by appointees and the skills required to perform them. Variations in the number of political appointees notwithstanding, studies of patronage appointments in mature Western democracies tend to concentrate on the roles played by a narrow category of political advisors at the top of public administration. In contrast, in the more politicized

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public administrations of developing nations, clientelism has been traditionally regarded as the main modality of patronage, and in many countries remains an important mechanism for gathering electoral support. However, scholars have been examining motivations beyond electoral gains and roles other than political brokerage in the study of public administrations in emerging democracies. For example, studies have focused on political officeholders’ need for technical advice as the motivation for the appointments of trusted technocrats in administrations with low technical capacity or highly politicized civil services (Teodoro and Pitcher 2017), particularly in processes of radical policy reform (Domínguez 2010; Silva 2009). Other studies have looked at political appointments at the upper levels of the public administration as instruments for coalition management (Bersch, Praça, and Taylor 2017; Garcia Lopez 2015). Still others have looked at appointees’ roles as political operators responsible for securing political support for policy initiatives, or as agents of their principals for controlling the public sector bureaucracy and state resources in patterns not entirely dissimilar to those of Western democracies (Scherlis 2012). Comparisons between countries and regions have centered on differences in scope, often under the assumption of the prevalence of clientelism in developing countries compared to developed nations, where patrons’ motivations and the roles of appointees exhibit more nuanced characteristics. In light of the evidence, this assumption is difficult to sustain. By examining the nature of trust between patrons and appointees and the skills required to perform different roles, it becomes possible to elaborate a typology of patronage roles and test hypotheses about the relation between patronage roles, political officeholders, and political parties, and about the impact of different patronage roles on the workings of government, the political system, and public administration.

A TYPOLOGY OF PATRONAGE ROLES Our typology captures a variety of roles that cuts across modalities of patronage both in high-­and low-­patronage administrations. We use two organizing dimensions: the nature of trust (partisan or nonpartisan), and the type of skills (professional or political) required from the appointees. When combined, the two dimensions permit classifying patronage roles across different modalities of patronage. Trust is the essence of patronage. It cuts across other selection criteria and combines with them in different measures. Politicians will normally and naturally tend to appoint people they trust and, given the asymmetrical power re-

INTRODUCTION

lation between patron and appointee, appointments usually terminate when there is a breakdown of trust. The significance of trust in patronage appointments is highlighted in a study of special advisors in the British government that states that “advisers serve as the eyes, ears and mouth of the politicians who appoints them” (LSE GV314 Group and Page 2012, 5). And, in some Latin American countries, political appointments are officially denominated “positions of special trust” (cargos de particular confianza). Relations of trust can be based on partisan or on other forms of trust outside partisanship, which are here labeled “nonpartisan.” In the latter we include personal trust between patrons and appointees, appointments made in order to co-­opt potential enemies (opposition parties, bureaucrats, etc.), or because the appointee represents some powerful corporate or union interests that the patron seeks to bring on board. The predominance of one type of trust over the other gives information about who has appointment power and, indirectly, about the nature of the political system. While legal power of appointment almost always resides in an executive officeholder, in practice the appointer may just be rubber-­stamping the appointment of a person trusted by the ruling party or by some other significant stakeholder, such as a business association or a trade union that has the real power of appointment. The predominance of partisan trust can be taken as an indicator of a strong party government or governmental coalition. Conversely, the predominance of personal trust may indicate a more personalistic political system, in which executive officeholders enjoy significant autonomous power relative to parties. While different types of trust give indications about the nature of the political system, different skill sets indicate the different roles appointees perform within the administrative machinery and the political system. Some appointees are chosen for their professional expertise within a policy field. While a neutral, professionally qualified civil service is considered important for good governance, democratically elected politicians have a legitimate right to seek advice from politically sympathetic experts. They also can demand that public administration implement government policies in an efficient and timely way. In other cases, appointees are chosen for their capacity to operate politically, which does not mean that they lack technical expertise but that the skills sought by the patron are predominantly political. Political skills are typically required for brokerage between politicians and voters in clientelist patronage arrangements, but they are also required for other roles, even in low-­patronage political systems. For instance, political skills are essential for media advisors, or to monitor the tenured bureaucracy, or to liaise between

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Table I.1. Typology of patronage roles

Partisan Nature of trust Nonpartisan

Type of skill Professional Political Apparatchiks: Party Commissars professionals Party operators Electoral brokers Political activists Political agents: Programmatic Minders technocrats Fixers Electoral agents

Source: Panizza, Peters, and Ramos Larraburu (2019)

executive officeholders and the legislature. We thus produce a typology of modalities of patronage practices combining the two dimensions (nature of trust and skillset), defining four main categories of patronage roles: party professionals, programmatic technocrats, political apparatchiks, and agents, plus a number of subcategories (see table I.1). Party professionals are appointees that combine partisan trust and technoprofessional competence. These appointees tend to be found in the upper and middle levels of the public administration. Their main role is policy design and implementation. Campbell and Peters (1988, 24) describe party professionals as proactive participants in the policy process who combine a technical grasp of at least one policy sector with a consciously held partisan trust. As they put it, “[these] officials explicitly identify with the fortunes of a specific political party.” Programmatic Technocrats

Programmatic technocrats combine technical competence with nonpartisan trust. We borrow the term from Silva (2009) to describe independent experts who influence their political bosses through personal trust and specialized knowledge of a policy field. These appointees can, and in many cases do, sympathize with their patrons’ political ideas, but their allegiance is to the officeholder and not the ruling party. In some cases they follow their patrons throughout their political careers in different positions in public administration. In others, despite being appointed by discretion, they become quasi-­permanent members of the high public administration, rotating among

INTRODUCTION

different positions of responsibility. In this capacity, they work for governments of different political affiliations, especially in more technocratic types of governments or when the career civil service lacks professional expertise. In some relatively rare instances the expertise of the individual itself is the foundation of trust, assuming that she or he will do the right thing technically. Apparatchiks

Moving now to the dimension of political skills, in the quadrant that combines them with partisan trust we find the category of apparatchiks. With variations, this category appears in both emerging and consolidated democracies. The appointment of party loyalists to public sector jobs is a longstanding feature of Latin America’s politicized public administrations (Philip 2003), in which it is often difficult to distinguish between the ruling party, the government, and the public administration. In European party systems, parties have come to compensate for loss of mass membership by becoming increasingly embedded in the state apparatus, drawing on state resources to maintain and reward their political cadres (Katz and Mair 2009). Apparatchiks’ roles in the public administration derive from their political capital as trusted by their party. Within this category there are several subtypes. In their study of European patronage, Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova (2012) found that the main role of political appointees was to control the public administration on behalf of the government. We call this subcategory commissars. We use the term party operators to refer to apparatchiks who use their political articulation skills to negotiate support for government policy within the party system, particularly within the ruling party or government coalition.2 They are mainly found at the upper and middle levels of public administration. They understand the politics of the day, acting as intermediaries within the policymaking process by liaising with members of parliament, interest groups, and other stakeholders. Party operators are particularly relevant when the government lacks a parliamentary majority, and in presidential systems in which the president has low or moderate powers and is forced to negotiate with congress, as happens in the US system (Halligan 2003). Also within the category of apparatchiks, but at lower levels of the bureaucracy, we find electoral brokers, whose role is to mediate the particularistic provision of public goods between governments and voters, typical of clientelism (Stokes et al. 2013). It is likely that this patronage role is more common in service delivery areas and at provincial and municipal levels. Finally, political activists at the lower levels of the public administration perform no distinct

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role in the administration; their main role is to campaign for the ruling party or to act as claques for the party in political rallies. This subcategory has been identified in Paraguay by Schuster (2015) and in Argentina by Oliveros (2016). Political Agents

In our fourth quadrant, combining nonpartisan trust and political skills, we identify political agents. The personal nature of trust gives agents little autonomy from their bosses, as they are not protected by party membership. At the higher levels of the public administration, the typical subrole is the so-­ called minders. The category fits the profile of a coterie of assistants who act as gatekeepers to their political bosses and become their “eyes, ears and mouth” (LSE GV314 Group and Page 2012, 5). In Mexico, this category of appointees has been traditionally called camarillas (cliques; Langston 1994), a term that gives a good idea of the nature of the relationship with their patrons. At the intermediate level we identify the category fixers. Similar to party operators, fixers liaise their patrons with the political system to mobilize support for their policy initiatives but, again, their loyalty is to their patron (normally executive officeholders) rather than to the ruling party. Finally, at the lowest levels of the public administration we identify the subcategory of electoral agents. They perform the same role as brokers but serve individual politicians as mobilizers and activists in electoral campaigns (Mares and Young 2016).

VARIATIONS IN PATRONAGE ROLES The roles described above are not mutually exclusive. But despite the subtle differences among them, they are also real and have implications for both the comparative study of public administration and the study of the relations of patronage appointments and political systems. For each category of patronage roles the question of the scope of appointments and variations within different areas of the public administration remain beyond the scope of this book. We now apply our typology to varieties of patronage appointments in Latin America. The various structural and agency factors influencing patronage appointments make it difficult to advance a general explanation of varieties of patronage. Our classification aims to identify the more frequent patronage roles that could be expected to be found in each cell, not to account for all possible patronage roles and every possible explanatory variable. A parsimonious way of understanding these modalities is to relate our typology to some key variables that have the potential to account for significant variation in patronage

INTRODUCTION

roles. The contributors to this book explore three sets of factors that we assume have a significant explanatory power in accounting for differences in patronage roles across the region. These are: (1) party system institutionalization and strategies of party-­building; (2) the strength and uses of presidential powers; and (3) the state’s bureaucratic capacity. Historically, processes of democratization and state building might have been considered equally important explanations (see Bresser-­Pereira 2004). However, at the time of this study all the countries involved were democratic and we therefore would expect no variation. However, democratization may have increased the emphasis of responsiveness of government, and hence the desire to appoint more technically qualified personnel than might be available from the career civil service. Party System Institutionalization and Strategies of Party Building

The study of the relations between parties and the state has been at the center of contemporary studies of patronage appointments. Parties shape the public sector and are shaped by the state. But parties exist not in isolation from each other but as part of systems with variable degrees of institutionalization. An institutionalized party system is a system in which a set of parties interact regularly in stable ways (Mainwaring 2018, 19). In an institutionalized party system there is considerable stability in who the main parties are and in how they behave (Mainwaring 2018, 68), even if some parties rise and others decline and the system adapts to new entrants (Mainwaring and Torcal 2006, 205). Ancillary characteristics of an institutionalized party system are strong roots in society, strong party organization, relatively low number of parties, and low ideological polarization (Mainwaring and Scully 1995). These features tend to require a strong party identity, and a large mass of party cadres—­g roups of individuals who have influence and prestige within political parties, generally due to the political or technical knowledge they possess—­and activists that perform organizational tasks and link parties with the state and their mass constituencies. Concerning Latin America, the region’s return to democracy in the 1980s was assumed to lead to a process of progressive institutionalization of party systems. However, four decades into the third wave of democratization, parties remain weak and party systems are more fluid than they were a decade ago throughout most of the region (Levitsky, Loxton, and Van Dyck 2016). Political change in the region over the past decades includes processes of party system deinstitutionalization and reinstitutionalization, the enduring appeal of populism and political outsiders, the increasing presence of coali-

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tion presidentialism, the emergence of new dominant parties, and the return of old ones. Reviewing the status of party systems in the region, Levitsky, Loxton, and Van Dyck (2016, 1–2) note that “of the six party systems scored as ‘institutionalised’ in Mainwaring and Scully’s (1995) work on party system institutionalisation, one (Venezuela) has collapsed fully, three (Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica) have collapsed partially, and a fifth (Chile) has arguably been uprooted. Of the four party systems that Mainwaring and Scully (1995) classified as ‘inchoate,’ only Brazil has strengthened over the last two decades.” Just three years after the publication of Levitsky, Loxton, Van Dyck, and Domínguez’s book, the picture has further evolved, with the Brazilian party system further fragmenting in the aftermath of the “Car Wash” corruption scandal and the 2018 election, and the Argentine, Chilean, and Colombian systems experiencing further transformations. Parties and party systems are not stable; they are moving parts. In developing democracies parties are often new and may undergo dramatic transformations (Lupo 2016). In order to have a more dynamic picture of the relations between parties and the public administration, we need to complement the study of party system institutionalization (PSI) with the analysis of strategies of party building (Levitsky, Loxton, Van Dyck, and Domínguez 2016). Fluidity may be the result of changing structural conditions that have weakened incentives for traditional strategies of party building and even provide resources and incentives for forms of electoral competition and the exercise of public office that do not require political parties. Some of the more successful and enduring parties in Latin America were (or evolved into) clientelist-­based machines (Levitsky, Loxton, Van Dyck, and Domínguez 2016). Clientelist machines are still important electoral resources throughout much of the region, particularly at local and provincial levels (Levitsky and Murillo 2005, Stokes 2005). But different developments, such as the shrinking of the state as a result of the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s and the need to appeal to broader constituencies, including a growing middle class, have made the building and maintenance of clientelist machines more difficult and costly and the electoral returns of clientelist exchanges more uncertain, particularly at a national level. Political change has provided politicians with alternative strategies to building party machines in order to contest elections and exercise office. Some of these strategies are not new and they are not exclusive to Latin America, but the weakness of political parties and the volatility of politics in the region have made these developments more relevant than in the past. In the era of

INTRODUCTION

political outsiders, it is possible to run for the presidency without long political careers and resource-­intensive political machines. In some countries of the region new parties have bypassed traditional forms of party building by relying on business corporations to provide financial resources, electoral organizers, infrastructure, and distributional networks (Barndt 2017). Businessmen-­t urned-­politicians can draw on their own resources to contract electoral activists and hire political operatives as substitutes for party organizations, as was the case in Peru with Cesar Acuña between 2002 and 2014 (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016) and, more recently, in Uruguay’s 2019 primary presidential election with Juan Sartori (Vázquez and Del Rio 2019).3 The use of social media allows anti-­status-­quo politicians to appeal to voters without the need for strong party organizations, as was the case of the electoral campaign of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election. While politicians may not need traditional party organizations to contest elections, they still require trusted personnel to govern. The hegemony of the neoliberal economic model in some countries of the region, such as Peru, Chile, and Colombia, has led to the consolidation of a neoliberal technocracy that provides advice and expertise to officeholders and swap positions between the public and private sectors and between different agencies in the state sector, as has been the case with the public sector technocracy in Peru (see chapter 6). In office, business–friendly presidents appoint private sector affiliated think executives and programmatic technocrats from business-­ tanks to run the high public administration, as has been the case of President Mauricio Macri’s administration in Argentina (see chapter 1). The ever-­shifting patterns of party building and PSI in Latin America raise the question of whether PSI is still an appropriate conceptual lens through which to study political parties and their relation with modalities of patronage in the region. We believe it still is. Differences in PSI contribute to explaining differences in patronage practices between, say, the highly institutionalized party system of Uruguay and the almost totally deinstitutionalized party system of Peru, as shown in the chapters by Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio and by Muñoz and Baraybar, respectively, in this volume. Institutionalized parties tend to privilege partisan over personal trust. While institutionalized parties can, and often do, colonize the state, party organization exists autonomously from the state apparatus, precedes the party’s access to government, and survives its demise. Parties with a strong organizational base may use patronage appointments to reward their cadres and control the public bureaucracy (Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova 2012). In-

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stitutionalized parties will also have their own pool of party professionals to advise officeholders in the design and implementation of public policy. This locates patronage appointments in institutionalized party systems predominantly in the upper quadrants of our typology. In contrast, in weakly institutionalized party systems, politicians mobilize support based on personalistic appeals and are often reluctant to invest in party structures that limit their power and autonomy. Yet, if elected, political officeholders will still need to appoint trusted personnel for policy design and implementation, particularly in countries with weak state capacities. Officeholders will also seek to control state resources for their political ends and gain political support for their policy initiatives. But the nature of trust between patrons and appointees will be personal rather than partisan, placing appointees in the lower quadrants of our typology. The nature of trust and the roles of appointees, however, are not fixed in time but can change depending on the strategies and dynamics of party building. Politicians that gain office with weak or nonexistent party organizations can use patronage appointments for party building from within the state. They may initially appoint personnel based on relations of personal trust, ideological affinity, or policy expertise. They can also use appointments to reward individuals, business groups, think tanks, or social organizations that have contributed to their campaigns. But as they get entrenched in office, relations with their appointees become more institutional and trust more partisan. In this process, programmatic technocrats turn into party professionals and political agents into apparatchiks, as happened during the governments of president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina (Panizza, Ramos Larraburu, and Scherlis 2018) and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (Sandoval, this volume). PSI has also been associated with high levels of programmatic commitments. Programmatic or ideological linkages are important means by which voters become attached to parties and, hence, by which parties build a stable electoral base that promotes party continuity. However, clientelist attachments can produce the same institutional stability, as exemplified by several traditional parties in Latin America, such as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Mexico and the Partido Colorado in Paraguay. Conversely, when party systems collapse, policy can change abruptly. Challenger parties and populist political outsiders can have strong ideological beliefs and programmatic preferences, as exemplified by some of the left-­w ing populist parties in Latin America that disrupted party systems in the first decade of this century (Philip and Panizza 2011). Thus, whether links with the elec-

INTRODUCTION

torate are programmatic or clientelist depends on the nature of the political actors (both parties and office-­seeking political leaders) rather than on the party system as a whole. It is conceivable that in a given political system some parties’ links with voters are predominantly programmatic while others tend to be clientelist. Moreover, in societies with high levels of economic inequalities and class fragmentation, such as those of Latin America, parties can segment their appeal, appealing to certain constituencies on programmatic grounds and to others on clientelist or personalistic ones (Luna 2016), which will require appointees to perform a variety of roles within the same administration. When links between parties and voters are programmatic, we expect patronage roles to concentrate predominantly in the left quadrants of our typology and when clientelist, in the right quadrants. Whether these roles are located predominantly in the upper or lower quadrants will, in turn, depend on the institutionalization of the relevant actors and on strategies of party building. In the case of institutionalized parties with programmatic links with the electorate, we expect to find more party professionals and political operators, as well as more programmatic technocrats and fixers for noninstitutionalized programmatic actors. When links are clientelist, we expect to find brokers and activists in institutionalized party systems and electoral agents in weakly institutionalized ones.

THE STRENGTH AND USES OF PRESIDENTIAL POWERS We have emphasized so far the role of political parties and party systems as explanations for different models of patronage roles. But parties are not likely to be the sole or even the main holders of patronage powers. It is our assumption that the actors that control the public administration (executive officeholders) are key actors in the control of patronage appointments. Scholars of the presidency and presidential leadership have paid particular attention to the constitutional and partisan powers of the presidency. The president’s control over the rest of the executive branch and the associated powers of patronage is a significant dimension of presidential powers (Shugart and Carey 1992). It is likely, for instance, that in presidentialist systems, such as those prevailing in Latin America, the politicoinstitutional powers of the presidency and the levels of party systems’ institutionalization may be the main explanatory variable for who holds the power of appointment. Those powers may, however, be exercised differently depending on the relations between presidents and parties, the makeup of the political system, and the policy areas within which those appointments are made.

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The “third wave” of presidential studies has used a principal-­agent institutional model to analyze relationships between presidents and parties (Elgie 2005). In well-­institutionalized party systems, party organizations are not subordinated to the political career of a leader; they have their own independent status and continuity (Huntington 1968, 12–24). Under these conditions, executive officeholders act mainly as agents for their parties (Elgie 2005, 117). Acting as principals, parties and party factions will constrain and condition the officeholders’ power of appointment, as the president’s discretional use of patronage appointments will be limited by the need to use patronage appointments to secure the support of the ruling party, party factions, or governmental coalition. Under these conditions we expect that patronage appointments will be concentrated in the upper quadrants of our typology. Conversely, in cases of weak party systems or party systems collapse, in which parties are little more than vessels for the president’s political interests, the principal-­agent relation is reversed, with parties acting as agents for the president, who controls the party or uses the state apparatus to set up and maintain his or her own personalist party. Within this context, parties have little or no leverage over the president and no political agenda independent from that of the executive branch. Acting as principal, the president has a significant margin of autonomy for dictating policy and making discretionary appointments. As the weakness of party systems is normally combined with weak checks and balances, it also gives presidents the power to make discretional use of state resources, including patronage appointments, in order to advance their own political interests. Under these circumstances, presidents will enjoy considerable autonomy to appoint personally trusted personnel of no distinctive political affiliation in positions of responsibility at all levels of the public administration. In political systems in which the president is the principal and the ruling party the agent, personal trust will prevail, and we expect patronage appointments to be concentrated in the lower quadrants of our typology. The two models of principal-­agent relations between parties and presidents are ideal types that include a number of gradients and margins of variation related to strategies of party building. In the cases of institutionalized party systems, presidents and parties can also act with a significant degree of autonomy from each other. This would allow the president a relatively high margin of autonomy to appoint his or her own trusted personal advisors at the top of the public administration, a situation that is particularly likely to be common in the so-­called centers of government—­that is, the institution

INTRODUCTION

or group of institutions that provide direct support to the president or prime minister. Last but not least, the principal-­agent relation can change over time, as parties become institutionalized and deinstitutionalized and leaders face political challenges and problems of succession. Parties and officeholders, however, are not the only relevant actors in the politics of patronage. Particularly when parties are weak and presidents are not actively seeking to build party machines, patronage may be exercised by other actors such as unions or business associations on whose support the government relies. This individualized form of patronage is built on trust as much as or more than the form based on parties, but trust is “nonpartisan ” in the sense with which we use the term in our typology, signifying actors other than political parties. Last but not least, patronage appointments are important tools for promoting governability. To this purpose, patronage appointments can be used as instruments for intraparty cohesion and for the management of governmental coalitions. While the use of patronage appointments to cement coalition governments is well established in parliamentary regimes, it is also an important tool of governability in presidential regimes. Scholars of presidentialism have argued that in presidential regimes there are fewer incentives for parties to join governmental coalitions than in parliamentary ones, which create important problems of governability, especially for presidents that do not enjoy a parliamentary majority (Linz 1990). However, the recent history of Latin America’s presidential regimes in the 1990s and 2000s has shown that coalition presidentialism is much more common than predicted by critics of presidentialist regimes (Chasquetti 2008; Alemán and Tsebelis 2012) and that patronage appointments have played a significant role in intraparty management and in the setting up of presidential governing coalitions. For example, Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio (2016) have shown how in Uruguay, the administrations of Presidents Tabaré Vázquez (2005– 2010) and José Mujica (2010–2015) allocated ministerial posts in direct proportion to the share of the votes of the different factions of the ruling Frente Amplio coalition to secure parliamentary support from the ruling party. And in Brazil, which has a highly fragmented party system that requires a multiparty alliance to ensure a parliamentary majority, presidents have made wide use of the power of patronage appointments to secure the support of ideological diverse parties to form large governmental coalitions (Bersch, Praça, and Taylor 2017; Garcia Lopez 2015; Praça, Freitas, and Hoepers 2011; Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, this volume). When appointments are made for the purpose of building and sustaining governmental coalitions we expect that

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appointments will be concentrated in the upper quadrants of our typology, as the parties that make up the governing coalitions will have real power of appointment.

THE STATE’S BUREAUCRATIC CAPACITY The above explanations for the use of patronage focus on political factors that shape the opportunities to use patronage. The degree and type of patronage can also be influenced by the nature of the bureaucracy itself, and the legal frameworks within which the bureaucracies function. These factors may be important in creating the demand for patronage appointments, as well as in shaping the means through which they are made. The general image of public bureaucracies in Latin America is not positive. The impressionistic evidence is to some extent supported by objective evidence. For example, the Quality of Governance survey on the professionalization of the public bureaucracy in Latin America shows that the scores for Latin American countries tend to be below the world average, and much lower than the scores of the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development countries (Teorell et al. 2022). Likewise, evidence from the World Bank shows that dealing with bureaucracy in Latin American countries tends to be more difficult than in many other countries (World Bank 2022). The legalistic nature of public bureaucracy in Latin America is one of the impediments to creating a more effective and efficient public bureaucracy (see Ramos Larraburu and Milanesi 2021). To some degree inherited from Spanish and French legalism in administration, the emphasis on law as opposed to management as preparation for the civil service and as the way to making organizations perform can inhibit performance and make the life of a public administrator in these countries frustrating. Yet the overall picture of weak bureaucratic capabilities masks variations in time as well as between countries. In the first decade and a half of the current century a number of countries in the region undertook programs of civil service reform of different degrees of ambition and success (Cortázar Velarde, Lafuente, and Sanginés 2014). Summarizing the outcomes, a report by the Inter-­American Development Bank (IADB) notes that there has been encouraging progress in terms of the modernization of the civil service in the region, even if it remains at a relatively low level (Cortázar Velarde and Lafuente 2014). And the same report notes that there were still considerable variations in the quality and professionalization of the civil service throughout the region (Iacoviello and Strazza 2014; Kopecký et al. 2016). In the cases of

INTRODUCTION

weaker bureaucracies, patronage may be used to strengthen the state in the short run. Regarding variations in the quality of the bureaucracy, we assume that a well-­qualified body of civil servants, particularly at the top of the administrative hierarchy, as is the case in Brazil, could make it less necessary to use patronage appointments to draw technical expertise from technoprofessional outsiders. Concerning the legal framework that regulates appointments to the public sector, we suggest that the rigid and ultralegalistic nature of civil service regulations for appointments and promotions could have divergent influences in the scope of patronage appointments. In countries with a strong tradition of rule of law, such as Uruguay, this could limit the ability of political officeholders to make discretionary appointments beyond those authorized by law. Conversely, in other countries with weaker law enforcement and control mechanisms, it can be used politically to justify the use of informal mechanisms of appointment to avoid expensive and time-­consuming procedures for appointment and promotion that tend to reward seniority over merit (see Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio and Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume). These three factors are all important in explaining the levels and types of patronage practices in the Latin American countries studied. There is a host of other possible explanations, but both the literature on patronage and our observations of the cases lead us to focus on these three. Some of these factors are general—­for example, the legalistic tradition of administration across the region—­while others such as levels of socioeconomic development may vary across the countries. The limitations of space and data prevent thorough discussions of all of these factors, but they can provide the basis for future studies of patronage.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY Measuring patronage is not straightforward, as the exercise of patronage comprises a combination of formal and informal practices (Helmke and Levitsky 2006). An analysis of formal rules, such as laws, decrees, and constitutional dispositions that regulate public sector appointments can give a broad idea of the official number of discretional appointments. Such a study, however, risks missing a significant number of appointments that are regulated by informal rules that work around or simply violate legal dispositions. In an attempt to get a more comprehensive picture, scholars have attempted to estimate the numbers of discretional appointments by using proxies, such as increases in the number of public employees or in personnel spending. These

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indicators, however, are influenced by factors beyond the power of actors to appoint discretionarily and may thus not truly reflect patronage practices (Kopecký Mair, and Spirova 2012; Scherlis 2013). Informal practices are notoriously difficult to measure with accuracy and borderline cases often require judgment calls. An accepted qualitative method for measuring the impact of informal institutions on public life is to survey the perceptions of experts (Peabody et al. 1990). For example, this method was used by Evans and Rauch (1999) to identify features of Weberian bureaucracies in newly industrialized countries. Our research adopts and adapts the method of experts’ survey originally developed by Kopecký, Scherlis, and Spirova (2008) and more recently employed by Meyer-­Sahling and Veen (2012) and by Kopecký et al. (2016) for their comparative study of patronage in twenty-­t wo countries from five world regions. In order to have a more rounded picture of patronage practices and in an attempt to minimize cognitive and political bias, we drew our interviewees from a wide range of political and professional fields comprising experts with a broad knowledge of the public administration and party systems of the countries in question and key informants chosen for their inside knowledge of four areas of the central public administration of each country selected for this research. Experts included scholars, specialized journalists, trade union leaders, parliamentarians, and public sector consultants. Key informants included active and retired career civil servants, trade unionists, current and former executive officeholders, and politically appointed public sector workers. We chose four policy areas representative of the central public administration in all countries included in this book: the economy, social development, foreign relations, and agriculture. These areas were chosen on the expectation based on the literature on public bureaucracies that they represent different patterns of bureaucratic professionalization (Peters 1988): more professional in the economy and foreign affairs, more technical in agriculture, and more politicized in social development. The administrative hierarchy in each area was divided into “high” (top managerial level), “middle” (lower managerial and high administrative levels) and “low” (low administrative level, technical and service personnel) tiers, in accordance with each country’s administrative scale of public sector positions. We complemented the questionnaire and checked the interviewees’ views against a number of primary and secondary sources. These included government documents, background interviews, Freedom of Information requests, press reports, international surveys, and academic studies. For changes in

INTRODUCTION

the total number of public employees we relied on officially published figures. We surveyed legislation and other publicly available sources to estimate the number of discretional appointments authorized by law. The countries included in this study were selected to include significant variation in two key variables: bureaucratic development and PSI. Regarding the former, Zuvanic and Iacoviello (2009) divide the countries of Latin America into three categories according to their levels of bureaucratic development, a category that combines merit with the functional capacity of the civil service. The top category includes “countries that have institutionalized civil services with practices that take into account the abilities and credentials of officials and structures that tend to maintain and develop a higher quality of work in the service” (160). Brazil and Chile are included in this category. In the second category, “bureaucracies are relatively well structured. . . . However, some of the guarantees of merit management tools that permit effective utilization of the competence of employees, groups, and institutions have not been consolidated” (161). Argentina, Mexico, and Uruguay fall into this category. The third category of countries “have bureaucracies with minimal development. . . . Here politicization is so strong that it hinders the development of a professional civil service” (161). Ecuador and Peru are classified at this level. Concerning PSI, we drew on Mainwaring’s (2018) scores for PSI for Latin America (1990–2015) and on the Varieties of Democracy 2019 index of PSI (V-­Dem 2019). While the two indexes rank party systems slightly differently, they both register significant variations in PSI in the countries under study, with Chile, Uruguay, and Mexico as the countries with the most highly institutionalized party systems and Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru at the bottom. Table I.2 shows the seven countries in this study arrayed according to the levels of PSI and bureaucratic development, using the criteria in the preceding paragraphs. The cases we have included cover five of the six possible combinations of values on those variables. It may be, however, that a Latin American country with a weak party system is unlikely to be able to develop a strong, professional public service. Newly formed and personalistic parties will tend to want to have the capacity to appoint their own officials in order to place their stamp on the government of the day. The third independent variable did not figure heavily in the selection of the cases. Although there are indeed differences in the powers exercised by presidents in these countries, the differences are often subtle (Morgenstern, Polga-­Hecimovish, and Shair-­Rosenfield 2013). The several dimensions of presidential power—­for example, relationships with congress, exposure to

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Table I.2. Countries’ classification by party-system institutionalization and levels of bureaucratic development Party-system institutionalization Low High High Brazil Chile Mexico Medium Argentina Bureaucratic Uruguay development Ecuador Low Peru Source: Authors’ elaboration with data from V-Dem (2019) and Zuvanic and Iacoviello (2009)

impeachment, power over the courts—­make clearly identifying more powerful official powers of the president difficult, and identifying the informal powers is even more difficult still.

THE COUNTRY STUDIES This volume consists of seven chapters each focusing on one country, and a concluding chapter that brings together the findings and relates them to our framework for analysis. There was no clear theoretical or analytic variable that could be used to order the chapters, so we opted to arrange the chapters alphabetically, beginning with Argentina and concluding with Uruguay. Argentina has for a long time had a weak civil service system and a great deal of patronage in government. Mercedes Llano shows, however, that the nature of patronage has changed and has become increasingly technocratic, given the weakening of the political party system. The Brazilian patronage system also has technocratic elements, and is linked to some extent to the formal personnel system of the country’s federal public administration. Sérgio Praça, Fernanda Odilla, and João V. Guedes-­Neto map the changes in patronage that have occurred from the end of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva’s government through to the end of President Dilma Rousseff’s, and the role that changing politics during this period had on public personnel. Chile has perhaps the most professionalized civil service system among these seven countries, but patronage appointments have been increasingly important. Emilio Moya Díaz and Victor Garrido demonstrate that the influence of parties over appointments in government has been declining, and the power of the president has been increasing. That pattern of presidential power in appointments is even clearer in Ecuador, because of the weak party

INTRODUCTION

system and more personalist regimes of presidents. Cecilia Sandoval shows the strong role of presidential appointments, but also that the appointments being made often are individuals with necessary technical skills for making policy. The upper levels of the public administration in Mexico have long been dominated by patronage appointments, even after significant attempts at administrative reform. Mauricio Dussauge-­Laguna and Alberto Casas document the importance of patronage appointments and the links to party and individual office holders in Mexico. The system of public employment in Peru is somewhat similar to that of Ecuador, given the absence of an effective civil service system and a very weak party system. Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar demonstrate the importance of the appointed officials for governance, and the strong role of personal trust in making the appointments. Finally, Uruguay has the most institutionalized party system among this group of countries. Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio show that the party system is important in selecting individuals for important positions in government. The authors also show how the use of patronage appointments is linked to a civil service system that is becoming more institutionalized.

◊  ◊  ◊ This study of patronage in Latin America creates a typology of patronage. In so doing, we are pointing out that what may appear to be similar cases are in fact different, and have very different political dynamics. Further, we are pointing out that patronage may contribute to the quality of governance, perhaps especially when there is a weak civil service system. While we cannot test in any definitive manner for the links between patronage and variables such as institutionalization of the party system and the nature of the bureaucracy and presidency in these countries, the evidence coming from the country case studies does provide important insights. We identify patterns of patronage and governance that are important for understanding governance not only in Latin America but also in other parts of the world with extensive patronage systems.

REFERENCES Aberbach, Joel D., and Bert A. Rockman. 1994. “Civil Servants and Policymakers: Neutral or Responsive Competence?” Governance 7 (4): 461–69.

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Francisco E. Panizza, B. Guy Peters, & Conrado Ramos Larraburu Alemán, Eduardo, and George Tsebelis. 2012. “Partidos políticos y coaliciones de gobierno en las Américas.” Política. Revista de Ciencia Política 50 (2): 5–32. Arriola, Leonardo R. 2009. “Patronage and Political Stability in Africa.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (10): 1339–62. Bach, Tobias, Gerhard Hammerschmid, and Lorenz Löffler. 2020. “More Delegation, More Political Control? Politicization of Senior-­L evel Appointments in 18 European Countries.” Public Policy and Administration 35 (1): 3–23. Barndt, William T. 2017. “The Organizational Foundations of Corporation-­Based Parties.” In Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, 356–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bersch, Katherine, Sérgio Praça, and Matthew M. Taylor. 2017. “State Capacity, Bureaucratic Politicization, and Corruption in the Brazilian State.” Governance 30 (1): 105–24. Bresser-­Pereira, Luiz Carlos. 2004. Democracy and Public Management Reform: Building the Republican State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Colin, and B. Guy Peters. 1988. “The Politics/­Administration Dichotomy: Death or Merely Change?” Governance 1 (1): 79–99. Chasquetti, Daniel. 2008. Democracia, presidencialismo y partidos políticos en América Latina: evaluando la “difícil combinación.” [Montevideo]: Instituto de Ciencia Política, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República. Cortázar Velarde, Juan Carlos, and Mariano Lafuente. 2014. “Resumen Ejecutivo.” In Al servicio del ciudadano. una década de reformas del servicio civil en América Latina (2004–13), edited by Juan Carlos Cortázar Velarde, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés, xxi–xxvii. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. Cortázar Velarde, Juan Carlos, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés, eds. 2014. Al servicio del ciudadano. una década de reformas del servicio civil en América Latina (2004–13). Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. Dahlström, Carl, and Victor Lapuente Giné. 2017. Organizing Leviathan: Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Making of Good Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Domínguez, Jorge. 2010. “Technopols: Ideas and Leaders in Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s.” In Technopols: Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s, edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, 1–48. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Elgie, Robert. 2005. “From Linz to Tsebelis: Three Waves of Presidential/­Parliamentary Studies?” Democratization 12 (1): 106–22. Evans, Peter, and James Rauch. 1999. “Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-­National Analysis of the Effects of ‘Weberian’ State Structures on Economic Growth.” American Sociological Review 64 (5): 748–65.

INTRODUCTION Garcia Lopez, Félix, ed. 2015. Cargos de confiança no presidencialismo de coalizão brasileiro. Brasilia: IPEA. Gladden, E. N. 1967. The Civil Services of the United Kingdom, 1855–1970. London: Frank Cass. González-­Ocantos, Ezequiel, and Paula Muñoz. 2017. “Clientelism.” In The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology, edited by William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner, 750–66. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halligan, John. 2003. “Leadership and the Senior Service from a Comparative Perspective.” In Handbook of Public Administration, edited by B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre, 98–108. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky. 2006. Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hicken, Allen. 2011. “Clientelism.” Annual Review of Political Science 14 (1): 289–310. Huntington, Samuel P. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hustedt, Thurid, and Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen. 2014. “Ensuring Political Responsiveness: Politicization Mechanisms in Ministerial Bureaucracies.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 80 (4): 746–65. Iacoviello, Mercedes, and Luciano Strazza. 2014. “Diagnóstico del servicio civil en América Latina.” In Al servicio del ciudadano: una década de reformas del servicio civil en América Latina (2004–13), edited by Juan Carlos Cortázar Velarde, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés, 13–52. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 2009. “The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement.” Perspectives on Politics 7 (4): 753–66. Kopecký, Petr, Peter Mair, and Maria Spirova, eds. 2012. Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kopecký, Petr, Jan-­Hinrik Meyer-­Sahling, Francisco Panizza, Gerardo Scherlis, Christian Schuster, and Maria Spirova. 2016. “Party Patronage in Contemporary Democracies: Results from an Expert Survey in 22 Countries from Five Regions.” European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 416–31. Kopecký, Petr, Gerardo Scherlis, and Maria Spirova. 2008. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Party Patronage.” Working paper, Committee on Concepts and Methods, Series 25, Leiden University. Langston, Joy Kathryn. 1994. An Empirical View of the Political Groups in México: The Camarillas. México: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. Levitsky, Steven, James Loxton, and Brandon Van Dyck. 2016. Introduction to Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, 1–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Francisco E. Panizza, B. Guy Peters, & Conrado Ramos Larraburu Levitsky, Steven, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, eds. 2016. Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levitsky, Steven, and María Victoria Murillo, eds. 2005. Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Levitsky, Steven, and Mauricio Zavaleta. 2016. “Why No Party-­Building in Peru?” In Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, 412–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linz, Juan J. 1990. “The Perils of Presidentialism.” Journal of Democracy 1 (1): 51–69. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2016. “Segmented Party–Voter Linkages: The Success of Chile’s Independent Democratic Union and Uruguay’s Broad Front.” In Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, 100–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LSE GV314 Group and Edward C. Page. 2012. “New Life at the Top: Special Advisers in British Government.” Parliamentary Affairs 65 (4): 715–32. Lupo, Noam. 2016. “Building Party Brands in Argentina and Brazil.” In Challenges of Party-­ Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, 76–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, ed. 2018. Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy R. Scully, eds. 1995. Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Mariano Torcal. 2006. “Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization.” Handbook of Party Politics, edited by Richard S Katz and William J. Crotty, 204–27. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Mares, Isabela, and Lauren Young. 2016. “Buying, Expropriating, and Stealing Votes.” Annual Review of Political Science 19:267–88. Meyer-­Sahling, Jan-­Hinrik, and Tim Veen. 2012. “Governing the Post-­Communist State: Government Alternation and Senior Civil Service Politicisation in Central and Eastern Europe.” Eastern European Politics 28 (1): 4–22. Morgenstern, Scott, John Polga-­Hecimovish, and Sarah Shair-­Rosenfield. 2013. “Tall, Grande or Venti: Presidential Powers in the United States and Latin America.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 5 (2): 37–70. Neuhold, Christine, Sophie Vanhoonacker, and Luc Verhey. 2013. Civil Servants and Politics: A Delicate Balance. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Oliveros, Virginia. 2016. “Making It Personal: Clientelism, Favors, and the Personalization of Public Administration in Argentina.” Comparative Politics 48 (3): 373–91. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61.

INTRODUCTION Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos Larraburu, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. “Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina’s and Uruguay’s Central Public Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Peabody, Robert L., Susan Webb Hammond, Jean Torcom, Lynne P. Brown, Carolyn Thompson, and Robin Kolodny. 1990. “Interviewing Political Elites.” Political Science and Politics 23 (3): 451–55. Peters, B. Guy. 1988. Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of Theory and Method. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Peters, B. Guy. 2013. “Politicisation: What Is It and Why Should We Care?” In Civil Servants and Politics: A Delicate Balance, edited by Christine Neuhold, Sophie Vanhoonacker, and Luc Verhey, 12–24. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Peters, B. Guy, and Jon Pierre. 2004. Politicization of the Civil Service in Comparative Perspective: A Quest for Control. London: Routledge. Philip, George. 2003. Democracy in Latin America: Surviving Conflict and Crisis? Cambridge: Polity. Piattoni, Simona, ed. 2001. Clientelism, Interests, and Democratic Representation: the European Experience in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Philip, George, and Francisco Panizza. 2011. The Triumph of Politics the Return of the Left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Cambridge: Polity. Praça, Sérgio, Andréa Freitas, and Bruno Hoepers. 2011. “Political Appointments and Coalition Management in Brazil, 2007–2010.”  Journal of Politics in Latin America  3 (2): 141–72. Ramos Larraburu, Conrado, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio. 2016. “The Politics of Party Patronage in Uruguay.” Paper presented at the 24th International Political Science Association Congress, Poznań, July 23–28. Ramos Larraburu, Conrado, and Alejandro Milanesi. 2021. “A Brief Story of Latin American Public Administration: A Particular Model.” In The Emerald Handbook of Public Administration in Latin America, edited by B. Guy Peters, Carlos Alba Tercedor, and Conrado Ramos, 9–19. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Roniger, Luis. 1994. “Civil Society, Patronage and Democracy.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 35 (3–4): 207–20. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2012. “Designaciones y organización partidaria: el partido de redes gubernamentales en el peronismo kirchnerista.” América Latina Hoy 62:47–77. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2013. “The Contours of Party Patronage in Argentina.” Latin American Research Review 48 (3): 63–84. Shugart, Matthew Soberg, and John M. Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Francisco E. Panizza, B. Guy Peters, & Conrado Ramos Larraburu Schuster, J. W. Christian. 2015. “When the Victor Cannot Claim Most Spoils: Patronage Control and Bureaucratic Professionalization in Latin America.” PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science. Silva, Patricio. 2009. In the Name of Reason: Technocrats and Politics in Chile. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. “Standard Dataset” 2022. Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg. Last modified February 4, 2022. https:/­/­qog.pol.gu.se/­data/­datadownloads/­qogstandarddata. Stokes, Susan C. 2005. “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina.” American Political Science Review 99 (3): 315–25. Stokes, Susan C., Thad Dunning, Marcelo Nazareno, and Valeria Brusco. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teodoro, Manuel P., and M. Anne Pitcher. 2017. “Contingent Technocracy: Bureaucratic Independence in Developing Countries.” Journal of Public Policy 37 (4): 401–29. Teorell, Jan, Aksel Sundström, Sören Holmberg, Bo Rothstein, Natalia Alvarado Pachon, and Cem Mert Dalli. 2022. The Quality of Government Standard Dataset, version Jan22. University of Gothenburg, The Quality of Government Institute. https:/­/­w ww.gu.se/­en/­quality -­government doi:10.18157/­qogstdjan22. Vázquez, Mauricio, and Andrés Del Rio. 2019. “A Uruguayan Bolsonaro in October?” Open Democracy,  July  16.  https:/­/­w ww.opendemocracy.net/­en/­democraciaabierta/­uruguayan -­bolsonaro-­october/­. V-­Dem. 2019. V-­Party Dataset. https:/­/­v-­dem.net/­. World Bank. 2022. Worldwide Governance Indicators 2021 Interactive, Interactive Data Access. https:/­/­w ww.worldbank.org. Zuvanic, Laura, and Mercedes Iacoviello. 2009. “The Weakest Link: The Bureaucracy and Civil Service Systems in Latin America.” With A. L. Rodríguez Gusta. In How Democracy Works: Political Institutions, Actors, and Arenas in Latin America Policymaking, edited by Carlos G. Scartascini, Ernesto Stein, and Mariano Tommasi, 147–76. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. https:/­/­publications.iadb.org/­en/­how-­democracy -­works-­political-­institutions-­actors-­and-­arenas-­latin-­american-­policymaking.

1 From Politicians to Managers Technocratic, Postideological Patronage in Argentina, 2015–2019 Mercedes Llano

P

atronage is a persistent, informal type of institution that cuts across all political systems, though it persists to varying degrees. Democratic systems set aside a variable number of positions to be filled according to some criteria of trust. While developed countries have institutionalized meritocracies that allow for the legal and effective occupation of only a small portion of offices by political appointees, these types of appointments are more widespread and diffuse in Latin America due to the civil service’s traditionally weak standing. In these cases, formal boundaries between politics and public administration tend to fade away due to the encompassing and persistent nature of patronage (Grindle 2012; Llano 2017; Peters and Pierre 2004). Like other Latin American democracies, Argentina has followed an erratic path of administrative reforms because of the heavy influence patronage has historically had in the building of political power. Modernization processes have undergone numerous stages of formal construction and informal deconstruction due to the profound roots of patronage in the Argentine state (Geddes 1996; Grindle 2012; Scherlis 2009). The multiplicity and instability of these institutional changes has favored the fragmentation of the public sector bureaucracy into diverse administrative arrangements that present unequal degrees of institutionalization on the basis of the meritocratic principle. The main recruitment system, which is called Sistema Nacional de Em-

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pleo Público (SINEP), has systematically been marginalized as a result of the politicization of high-­level positions and the progressive growth of a parallel structure of flexible temporary hires (Grindle 2012; Iacoviello and Llano 2017). Faced with such weaknesses, the civil service has been described as “quite a precarious idea” or as an institution “in search of an identity” (Ferraro 2006; Oszlak 1999). Hyperpresidentialism and the extraordinary patronage powers that are institutionally conferred to the president have hindered the full establishment of a meritocratic bureaucracy. Additionally, the low degree of autonomy possessed by the ruling party vis-­à-­v is the president guarantees that the latter has ample room for making discretionary appointments and, in that way, for exercising a hegemonic type of control over the state apparatus (Ferraro 2011; Llano 2019; Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018). The extent to which patronage penetrates Argentine bureaucracy has sparked academic interest in the study of its scope and motivations (see, for instance, Gordín 2001; Remmer 2007; Calvo and Murillo 2008; Scherlis 2009, 2012; and Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018). To that end, the goal of this study is to determine the roles of political appointees in their interaction with the party system and the public administration. Thus, in this chapter I will make use of the typology created by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019; see also the introduction to this book), which is based on the nature of trust relations between patrons and appointees and on the main skills sought when making discretionary appointments. The prevailing kind of trust, be it personal or political, could be an indicator of both the degree of institutionalization of the party system and the strength of coalition governments. In contrast, the dominant skills of appointees, whether technical or political, could provide an insight into the relationship between governments and the public bureaucracy. Building upon these premises, my goal in this chapter is to explore how far variations in the roles of political appointees are associated with both the level of institutionalization of the party system, and with changes in the characteristics of party organizations, during the first two years of the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015–2019). I have chosen this period because it represents the beginning of a transition between, on the one hand, a populist, leftist government with a strong hold on bureaucratic structures and one that operated within the context of a highly fluid party system, and, on the other, a coalition government led for the first time by a political force that had both a postideological and personalist appeal and the potential to bring about political realignments at the national level.

From Politicians to Managers

Table 1.1. Positions within the executive branch and other public, nonfinancial entities by ministry as of September 2018 Ministry

Number of employees

Percentage of federal workforce

Treasury and Finance

26,054

6.7

Agroindustry

15,190

3.9

Social Development

8,048

2.1

Foreign Affairs

2,736

0.7

Total

387,298

100

Source: Secretaría de Gestión y Empleo Público. 2018. Base Integrada de Empleo Público, https://www.argentina.gob.ar/modernizacion/empleopublico/biep.

METHODOLOGICAL REMARKS AND SOME FEATURES OF ARGENTINA’S CIVIL SERVICE Defining patronage as the power of political actors to appoint individuals by discretion to nonelective positions in the public sector, irrespective of the legality of the decision (Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova 2012; see also the introduction to this book), in this study I cover high-­, mid-­, and low-­level public sector positions from a set of four ministries that present varying degrees of professionalization and politicization: the Ministerio de Hacienda y Finanzas Públicas (Ministry of Treasury and Finance),1 the Ministerio de Agroindustria (Ministry of Agroindustry), the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also known as Cancillería) and the Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (Ministry of Social Development). These four ministries account for 13.4 percent of the total workforce of the executive branch at the federal level (see table 1.1). Different ranks coexist within each ministry that set up specific procedures for hiring employees.2 In this study I focus mainly on one of them, the Sistema Nacional de Empleo Público (SINEP; National System of Public Employment), because it is the cross-­cutting hierarchical scale that encompasses the highest number of positions within the executive branch (34 percent).3 Furthermore, in some cases, personnel at special corps and decentralized agencies that are governed by their own regulations have also been included; for instance, the Servicio Exterior de la Nación (National Foreign Service). Formally, the senior civil service is organized as a position-­based system that, on the one hand, organizes competitive recruitment processes for filling executive positions, and, on the other, determines the length of appointment

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(Iacoviello, Llano, and Ramos 2017). This system, which was designed to be a link between political authorities—­that is, ministers, secretaries, and undersecretaries—­and career civil servants, applies to national directors, general directors, and coordinators (see fig. 1.1) (Chudnovsky and Cafarelli 2018). In order for employees to access career positions, SINEP (as per Decree 298/­ 2008) determines whether a closed or open hiring process is to be held, depending on the level of the position in question. Additionally, appointments can be made through various mechanisms for hiring temporary personnel (Llano and Baumann, forthcoming). I have drawn the data in this study from semistructured interviews conducted with thirty-­seven key informants and experts. The interviewees, which included officials within the selected ministries, congresspeople, political leaders, union leaders, and experts in the field, were selected through snowball sampling.4 The profile of this study is predominantly qualitative, although some quantitative proxies and data from secondary sources were used in order to estimate the scope of patronage and to analyze the role of political appointees. The questionnaire focused on hierarchical positions at different levels, including ministerial cabinets, as the appointment logic at this level had an impact on bureaucratic appointments.

A DEINSTITUTIONALIZED PARTY SYSTEM AND THE NATIONAL RISE OF A PERSONALISTIC-­S TATE PARTY Since the reintroduction of democracy, Argentina’s party system has suffered from a persistent process of deinstitutionalization, having evolved from a relatively stable system of two main parties (the Peronist Partido Justicialista, PJ, and the Unión Cívica Radical, UCR) and multiple small, local parties, to a highly complex and volatile party system. This greater complexity has materialized in different phenomena, such as the fragmentation, denationalization, and personalization of the party system. It has also intensified the fusion of the ruling parties and the state (Gervasoni 2018; Scherlis 2008). Political identities in Argentina have traditionally been structured around the division between the Peronist and the non-­Peronist poles, the latter being historically embodied most successfully by the UCR and by fluctuating third parties, which introduced an element of instability to the party system. Ever since the return to democracy, numerous attempts were made to build new political organizations that could break the Peronist–Radical diarchy. Under different labels, a number of ephemeral political forces with strong personalist appeal and with their base of support located in the main cities’ metropolitan areas have emerged and subsequently mostly disappeared from

FroM PoLiTiCiAnS To MAnAGErS

Figure 1.1 Patronage and nonpatronage positions in the Argentine government. Source: Created by the authors, based on https://mapadelestado.jefatura. gob.ar/. the national scene, thereby injecting a high dose of openness and unpredictability to the political game (Abal Medina and Suárez Cao 2003; Gervasoni 2018; Malamud 2008; Malamud and De Luca 2016; Torre 2003). The political and social crisis that Argentina suffered in 2001 precipitated the fragmentation of the non-Peronist pole and, with it, the breakdown of the two-party system. The UCR’s retraction from the electoral arena set up a scenario in which the PJ’s hegemony combined with an atomized and denationalized opposition.5 The status of the PJ as the dominant party, followed by an unstructured group of weak or politically short-lived parties started to reverse in 2007. Starting that year, a new third party, called Propuesta Republicana (PRO), eventually managed to consolidate electoral support by winning the executive election in the city of Buenos Aires three times in a row (2007, 2011, and 2015) as well as the presidency in 2015. The PRO won the presidential election by leading a multiparty coalition (Cambiemos, “Let’s Change”), which included the UCR and a party called Coalición CívicaAfirmación por una República de Iguales (CC-ARI). Victories at the federal level and at the subnational elections in both the city and the province of Buenos Aires (which, combined, account for about 50 percent of the national vote), provided the PRO with the political base to build a national political organization capable of breaking Argentina’s historic party duopoly (Gervasoni 2018; Malamud and De Luca 2016; Mustapic 2013).

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The unraveling of Argentina’s traditional two-­party system has been associated with two processes that are crystallized in the PRO’s organizational model: personalization and the colonization of the state. In contexts of party systems’ deinstitutionalization, individual leaders tend to gain prominence in politics. In these circumstances, the party apparatus tends to give in to the power of the leader and become subordinated to him or her. In turn, new parties are created as mere personalist electoral vehicles for emerging leaders. In Argentina, these new personalistic political forces have been built either around political outsiders or from the remains of preexisting parties (Alcántara Sáez 2010; Gervasoni 2018; Mainwaring 2018). Simultaneously, the organizational format of political parties has been undergoing a profound transformation, which has intensified in a context of the party system becoming more weakly institutionalized. In this regard, parties have gradually retreated from society and colonized public offices. The extent to which voters feel represented by and identify with their elected deputies or parties in general has eroded, resulting in a decrease of voluntary activism. Consequently, parties depend on state resources in order to survive. As one of our interviewees put it: “It is difficult to find activists that are not getting paid . . . there are no activists that do not expect to be rewarded with a political appointment relatively soon” (interview with expert 36). The growing interpenetration between political forces and the bureaucratic state apparatus consolidated parties as parastatal organizations whose legitimacy no longer lies in the potential to represent aggregate interests but in the ability to offer competent governance (Mair 1994; Scherlis 2008; Scherlis 2013). Within this context, the party is set up and maintained by gaining access to public resources and by recruiting people who manage the bureaucracy and are close to the leader or to his or her inner circle. In Argentina, under this new model of governance, networks of trusted experts displaced party political cadres in the composition of the government. The party is thus structured around a popular leader who is surrounded by a web of professionals who, in turn, offer varying levels of competence and trust. Political leadership from within the party itself is marginal at best (Scherlis 2008). Changes within political organizations have reconfigured the relationship between presidents and ruling parties in Argentina. The greater interconnectivity between party organizations and the bureaucratic apparatus, and the leader’s control of public resources, have turned parties into mere agents that act on behalf of the president. Parties exist outside the bureaucracy, though not as an institutionalized organization but rather as an ensemble of regional political leaders who support the president. In turn, regional leaders receive

From Politicians to Managers

support from the president, who, from the top political office, distributes public resources for local actors to maintain their local party machinery. In general, the process by which the ruling party becomes subordinate to the president has taken two main forms in Argentina: the party as a stratarchical network, and the personalistic-­state party (Scherlis 2012, 2015). In the Argentine case, the concept of stratarchical networks help to illuminate the ties between presidents and the ruling party during Peronist administrations. Scherlis (2013) points out that, in federal political systems with several electoral levels (federal, provincial, municipal), parties face what Carty (2004) called the “stratarchical imperative”; that is, the need to integrate the party organization vertically under a single unifying principle. What unifies the PJ has been neither ideology nor identity but the president’s ability to discretionarily transfer funds from the federal government down to state and local governments. In these cases, the president and the party leader are one and the same person, with the president’s control of the government giving him or her supremacy over the party. The president has full authority to appoint cabinet members and to set the course of the administration, on the condition that he or she delivers electoral victory to the party. For as long as they upheld their end of the deal, presidents are free to make political appointments based on some criteria of trust that may not necessarily be partisan. In fact, during the Kirchnerist-­Peronist era (2003–2015), patronage appointments were primarily made on the basis of personal bonds with the president and his or her inner circle, without interference from the party apparatus (Malamud 2008; Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018; Scherlis 2012, 2015). Following the presidential election of 2015, the victory of the Cambiemos alliance saw the coming to power of a coalition that was hegemonized by a personalist-­state party, the PRO. The party was built from scratch (Gervasoni 2018; Vommaro and Morresi 2014) around an outsider, Macri, who enjoyed popularity due to his stint as president of one of Argentina’s main soccer teams (Mattina 2016).6 In the context of a partially collapsed party system, Macri, a businessman with strong links to several think tanks, founded his own party as an instrument to win a position in the executive office of Buenos Aires—­before using this as a springboard to run for the presidency (Bohoslavsky and Morresi 2016; Mauro 2016). In 2007 Macri became jefe de gobierno (head of government) of the city of Buenos Aires.7 The colonization of the local government’s bureaucratic structure, in confluence with its insertion in informal networks linked to the business world and civil society, became the foundations of the party under

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construction (Vommaro and Armesto 2015). The takeover of the government of Buenos Aires led to the blurring of boundaries between the PRO and the state apparatus and consolidated Macri’s position as the undisputed party leader. The structure of the party was fluid and hierarchical. Real power within the party was located in the top city offices. Decision making was particularly concentrated in the so-­called mesa chica (small board) that was headed by Macri and composed of an inner circle of trusted officials within the city administration (Mattina 2016).8 The PRO was subordinated to the head of government (Macri) and, unlike the PJ, the party followed its leader unconditionally (Scherlis 2013). Like most other personalistic-­state parties, the first “Macrista” cabinet of the city of Buenos Aires was mainly made up of high-­level officials who had no prior political experience but were personally trusted by Macri (Vommaro and Morresi 2014; Scherlis 2013). While it is true that the PRO’s territorial and national expansion, as well as the subsequent emergence of new political actors, qualified the degree to which the party maintained its personalist and unstructured character (Malamud 2008), the interactions between President Macri and the other parties that made up the ruling coalition maintained the same informal and individualized imprint that characterized Macri’s previous role as head of government in Buenos Aires. Thus, the PRO was able to transpose the model of governance centered around the leader and his inner circle, which had already been tested in local government, to the national scene. In short, the process of deinstitutionalizing the party system favored the emergence of a new third political force, whose predominantly personalist and statist characteristics influenced the constitution of new teams within the federal administration. Direct bonds of trust with the president and his inner circle constituted the main criteria by which cabinet members and their supporting bureaucratic networks operated, in a context where the ruling party lacked autonomy vis-­à-­v is the president.

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW POSTIDEOLOGICAL PARTY WITH DEEP ROOTS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR Aside from the personalistic state party format, other aspects of the PRO determined the type of patronage politics that characterized President Macri’s administration. Particularly relevant for the composition of the government’s politicobureaucratic teams were, on the one hand, the party’s sociocultural roots and the politicoideological values held by its supporters, and, on the other, attempts to “depoliticize” the administration altogether. The PRO was created right at the geographical epicenter of the crisis of rep-

From Politicians to Managers

resentation that hit Argentina’s political system in 2001: the city of Buenos Aires. In a political environment that was characterized by apathy and the rejection of traditional party organizations, the national party system was suffering from a partial collapse while the party system of the city of Buenos Aires went through a process of disintegration (Mattina 2016). It was in this context that the PRO emerged as a new party, formed out of the fusion of think tanks, private sector professionals, business leaders, and other actors from civil society (Vommaro and Armesto 2015).9 The PRO was set up with the aim of cultivating an image of a party centered on an outsider who could bring together all those who decided to enter politics in order to replace the old and discredited party leaders. The organization attempted to project a new way of doing politics, and to establish a new political ethos based on the values of entrepreneurship and the ethics that sought to frame government actions as transparent and efficient (Vommaro and Gené 2017; Vommaro and Morresi 2014;). But beyond that almost apolitical profile that the PRO tried to model, the new organization was built upon a heterogeneous base that also included people who were associated with “old politics.” So, in a context where the party system was becoming more deinstitutionalized, seasoned politicians from the PJ, the UCR, and other center-­ right parties, as well as different actors with no political expertise, joined the rising PRO (Bohoslavsky and Morresi 2016). By following a pragmatic and flexible strategy, the new party was founded exclusively as a vehicle for gaining power. Even though it was relatively close to the classical liberal-­conservative tradition, the PRO sought to create a postideological identity that could operate as an umbrella under which multiple actors could stand together. Indeed, its cadres positioned themselves beyond the old ideological divisions between left and right by placing themselves around a structuring axis that differentiates political identities according to their way of managing public affairs. According to this self-­image, one end of the axis was occupied by the PRO administration, which they considered new, efficient, transparent, and close to the people, while the other end corresponded to the old politics (politiquería) that they regarded as decrepit, inefficient, corrupt, and out of touch with the concerns of everyday individuals. The PRO leaders dismissed ideological considerations in favor of emphasizing the importance of management and promoted the idea of “modernizing” politics by adopting managerial tools from the private sector (Bohoslavsky and Morresi 2016; Vommaro and Gené 2017; Vommaro and Morresi 2014). By assigning central importance to management and downplaying the significance of politics, the construction of political structures—­that is, a party

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apparatus—­was sidelined as a top priority for the party leadership. Instead, the PRO was set up as a “brand” (Mattina 2016). Put differently, the party was configured as an empty vessel, set up solely to comply with electoral law so that it could take part in elections. The informal party that gave real existence to PRO was in the realms of local government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), with a strong hold on social media as well (interview with congressperson 27). The composition of government teams sought to reflect the desired message of renewing politics. However, and with varying levels of public visibility, it also aimed to integrate a partisan dimension that underpinned both the party’s rise to office and the building of coalitions to win elections. The first PRO administration brought together different categories of people to different spheres of government, such that party officials were assigned political duties whereas appointees without political expertise were given management tasks—­especially in the ministries related to welfare and finance. However, this initial balance was lost as the appointees from business and civil society were selected ahead of party officials, who were instead relegated to offices that were either exposed to less public scrutiny or were of an exclusively political nature. In accordance with the prioritization of management, the type of patronage politics carried out by the PRO privileged expertise and apolitical profiles, and the party recruited people who possessed strong management skills from the business world, think tanks, and other civil society movements (Vommaro and Gené 2017; Vommaro and Morresi 2014).

PATRONAGE POLITICS IN A WEAKLY STRUCTURED GOVERNING COALITION The personalist and pragmatic character of the PRO, as well as the characteristics of its social base, shaped the kind of patronage politics carried out by the coalition government. The coalition was characterized by a low level of institutionalization with no clear rules for the distribution of political positions. Within this weak politicoinstitutional arrangement, appointments were made without consultation with the parties that formed the coalition. Cambiemos emerged in a context of high polarization, specifically the Kirchnerism–anti-­Kirchnerism divide. As I remarked previously, the coalition included the PRO, the UCR, the CC-­A RI, and other small parties. Although the PRO led the coalition, the UCR provided an extensive network of political machines and local leaders at different levels of government, localities, neighborhoods etc. Their victory signaled the beginning of a passage from a type of hyperpoliticized leftist populist government, led by a stratar-

From Politicians to Managers

chical party that was rooted in the middle and the lower classes, toward a new type of government led by a personalist and postideological party, which showed affinity with the classical liberal tradition and was supported by the upper-­middle classes (Malamud 2016; Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018; Vommaro 2015). Despite gaining office with the support of other parties, in particular the UCR, President Macri reproduced the model of governance he had already applied in the city of Buenos Aires at the national level, which was characterized by a pattern of personalistic political appointments that recruited nonpartisan officials from business and civil society without formal rules for the distribution of political positions within the ruling coalition. Two factors allowed the PRO to appoint individuals to government positions with significant discretion: preelectoral agreements, and a high degree of confidence in the appointees’ managerial abilities. When the Cambiemos front was created, it was agreed that “government would not function as a coalition . . . the party that eventually wins was to be able to select its own governing team” (interview with congressperson 27).10 The overwhelming margin of victory that Macri achieved in the primary election triggered this clause (interview with congressperson 27; Suppo 2019). This agreement was made in the Argentine political context, which lacks a culture of interparty cooperation and where coalition governments are rare (Albalá 2016; Coutinho 2013).11 On the other hand, the personalization of appointments was linked to the high potential the government saw in managerialism as a tool to boost popularity and to facilitate the making of legislative alliances. Macri “bet that an administration which was more technical than political would succeed in terms of management, which would in turn provide him with more decision-­making power . . . and would make deals easier” (interview with congressperson 27; see also Bohoslavsky and Morresi 2016). The PRO discarded traditional coalition models, where the allocation of ministerial posts is decided in a more or less proportional fashion among partners based on their expected support in congress.12 In line with its previous experience in governing the city of Buenos Aires, the party imposed a division of roles that made the organization and dynamics of the front resemble a parliamentary alliance rather than a governmental one. This marked imbalance in the distribution of executive appointments favored the PRO, since it reflected the primary function of the party: the concentration of decision-­making power in the executive office. In contrast, the slight imbalance in the distribution of parliamentary seats in favor of the UCR highlighted the party’s own main task, which was to operate as a legislative shield for the

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government (Cruz 2016; interview with expert 35). Thus, the political wing of the alliance (colloquially called rosca política), in which the UCR played the leading role, was reduced to congressional politics (Malamud 2019; interview with congressperson 27). In accordance with the distinctive organizational fluidity shown by the leading coalition partners, no effective spaces or interparty dialogue was formalized beyond the abovementioned division of roles. In principle, a national forum of fluctuating size and diversity was created within Cambiemos, but it never actually materialized. In reality, this formal forum was replaced by the informal dynamics of party cooperation, which were governed by opaque decision-­making procedures limited to the president and his inner circle. Therefore, party organizations became marginal actors that were excluded from influencing public policy. Within the coalition, there were no formal democratic rules, either for distributing political appointments or for selecting candidacies for elected positions. The political space that was given to the leaders of allied parties was the product of individual deals that depended on the level of personal trust placed in those who operated the political networks (interview with expert 34; interview with expert 36). This functional division of labor, which operated within a political alliance devoid of any kind of institutionalization, resulted in the configuration of an unbalanced coalition with respect to the number of parliamentary seats of the coalition partners and their corresponding share of ministerial appointments. Half of all ministries were assigned to the party of the president, while the other half was distributed among independents and allies without taking into consideration the existing balance of power in congress. The UCR got 15 percent of the ministries despite holding 41 percent of all the Cambiemos parliamentary seats, while CC-­A RI and other provincial allies did not get any ministerial appointments at all even though they accounted for 5 percent and 6 percent of the coalition’s congressional seats, respectively (Skigin, Seira, and Cruz 2015). Regardless of the implicit or explicit preelectoral deals made by coalition members, this imbalance created tensions between the ruling party and its allies, who felt that they were being undercompensated (interview with expert 35). To use the terms of Amorim Neto’s (1998) study of coalition presidentialism, Macri built a loosely structured cabinet. One half of his cabinet consisted of PRO ministers, while the other half comprised either co-­opted ministers who lacked party endorsement or nonpartisan ministers who came from civil society and the business world, as well as technocratic experts (Sk-

From Politicians to Managers

igin, Seira, and Cruz 2015). Macri privileged a recruitment strategy that was predominantly personalist and not subject to party endorsements (interview with expert 36; interview with expert 34).13 The selection criteria focused on expertise with the goal of guaranteeing technical competence in line with the government’s policy preferences. This peculiar type of cabinet was complemented by a strategy of bureaucratic control that was highly centralized and detailed, to guarantee the bureaucrats’ strict alignment with the party leadership (interview with expert 35; Moe 2013). Beneath this centralizing strategy was a feeling of deep mistrust toward different actors. There was a lack of trust in the skills of political appointees to manage the public administration and an overvaluation of the managerial skills of private sector managers. There was also suspicion of the monopolization of high management positions within ministries by appointees belonging to the same political groups, especially those that were under the control of allied parties. There was mistrust of the “inherited” senior public sector managers in a context of intense political polarization and increased politicization within the state apparatus (interview with expert 34; interview with expert 35). These views led the government to build a single, centralized, decision-­making process coupled with a monitoring structure characterized by the appointment of personnel politically close to the executive office at the second level of the administrative pyramid, especially in offices that were under the control of the PRO’s coalition partners (interview with expert 34). The top of the administration was formed by a closed group of people that concentrated managerial decision making by “maintaining a clear distance between them and the rest [of the government].” The core was composed of the president and the chief of cabinet along with his two vice-­chiefs/­CEOs. Collectively, they were nicknamed “the triumvirate” (interview with expert 34; interview with union leader 11). Under the president and his inner circle, there were networks that were predominantly structured based on personal relationships and, less frequently, on the basis of party connections. The government, strongly influenced by its social base and by the overvaluation of managerial skills in the private sector, favored external recruiting (interview with expert 35; interview with expert 33). A distinctive feature of the administration was the application of practices of human resource management that were unusual in the public sector, such as setting up planning teams and using headhunters to fill managerial positions (interview with expert 35; interview with PRO official 25).

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THE SCOPE OF PATRONAGE The boundary between politics and public administration crystallizes the historic tensions between the goals of technical efficiency and democratic responsiveness. In Argentina, like in other countries, the dividing line is opaque due to the extension of informal practices. These blurry contours reflect the influence of trust, loyalty, and personal networks (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981; Heclo 1977; Llano 2017). The coexistence of many bureaucratic settings with different degrees of politicization and professionalization reveals the varying extent to which patronage exists in federal structures (Iacoviello, Pando, and Llano, 2021). In Argentina, career-­based systems within the government have systematically been marginalized by the strategies of politicization employed by each president to assert their dominance over the public administration. Presidents have bypassed and undermined the public sector bureaucracy by using three different strategies: (1) from the top down, by expanding political structures within the federal state;14 (2) by “the neck,” that is, by placing loyalists in senior positions within the civil service; and (3) from the edges, through the creation of parallel hiring systems (Chudnovsky and Cafarelli 2018; Iacoviello and Llano 2017). The Kirchner administrations applied all three strategies of politicization, whereas the Macri administration pursued mainly the first and second ones. During the successive Kirchner administrations, patronage was mainly aimed at politically controlling the bureaucracy and, less frequently, at building a partisan political machine called La Cámpora that was at the service of president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The goal was to politically subordinate the bureaucracy from the top down, by appointing loyalists at high-­and mid-­level strata, and by setting up a parallel structure of temporary contracts that bypassed the career civil service (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018; Kopecký et al. 2016). During this period (2003–2015), the executive’s organizational structure (ministries, secretaries, and undersecretaries) expanded by 78.5 percent (from 130 positions to 232 positions) and, because of the multiplying effect, the number of political positions grew by 66.5 percent (from 456 to 759).15 An unprecedented system of offices parallel to the administrative hierarchy were created, with new positions at the top established at a level equivalent to secretaries or undersecretaries—­even though their occupants did not carry out the tasks inherent to these political appointments (interview with foreign affairs official 12; interview with treasury official 5). Simultaneously, the government captured top-­level executive offices through

From Politicians to Managers

the creation of new senior managerial positions (up from 882 positions to 2324 positions, or an increase of 163.5 percent) and bypassing competitive mechanisms through the use of discretionary, provisional appointments. More broadly, a politicized parallel administration undermined the tenured public administration through a 339 percent increase in the number of temporary hires. Temporary personnel were eventually appointed permanently through formally competitive examinations that effectively gave temporary hires an inbuilt advantage and stuffed the administration with loyalists to the Kirchners (Iacoviello and Llano 2017; Llano and Baumann, forthcoming; Scherlis 2012; interview with treasury official 14).16 In the context of an economic crisis and mistrust of the public sector bureaucracy, Macri adopted a twofold strategy that involved increasing appointments at the senior levels while simultaneously reducing the number of positions at the lower levels. The incoming administration focused its patronage power on the political and high managerial layers of the administration, thereby reproducing the appointment practices that had been used by previous administrations, while at the same time reducing the number of temporary hires. The government justified the reproduction of old patronage practices by arguing that they responded to the deep tension between the incoming government’s political leadership and the highly politicized public sector bureaucracy that characterized their transition to power (interview with expert 34). The Macrist strategy of politicization consisted of creating new political units (ministries, secretariats, etc.) and appointing people politically close to the executive office to head them (interview with agroindustry official 18). During the first year of the Cambiemos administration, the number of ministries went up by 15 percent (from 16 to 20), which in turn resulted in a 20 percent increase in the number of secretaries (from 71 to 85), a 43 percent increase in the number of undersecretaries (from 145 to 207), and an 11 percent increase in political appointments (759 to 846) (Chudnovsky and Cafarelli 2018). The growth in the share of payroll expenses spent on political positions, which went up from 0.19 percent in 2015 to 0.23 percent in 2017, also confirmed this trend.17 Besides the implementation of President Macri’s agenda, the expansion of political positions presented two additional benefits. First, it enabled the government to offer competitive salaries to managers and leaders, who came from the business world and civil society organizations. These were “upper-­ class activists who worked in the private sector and earned better wages” (interview with treasury official 5). Second, it operated as a mechanism for

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fragmenting power, thus avoiding the emergence of strong groups who could limit the power of, or even overthrow, the president. Within the new government, the political capture of executive positions that are formally subjected to meritocratic selection procedures—­such as national directors, general directors, and coordinators—­was massive. During the first year of the administration, the number of these high-­level positions grew by 16 percent (from 2,324 to 2,707) and the traditional practice of making temporary and exceptional appointments continued, except for some positions that were filled using competitive examinations (concursos públicos) held in the Ministry of Culture. By 2016, 85 percent of public sector executives had entered the public administration through indefinite, albeit temporary, appointments, while the remaining 15 percent had been appointed through meritocratic selection processes (Chudnovsky and Cafarelli 2018; interview with treasury official 1; Llano and Baumann, forthcoming). Although the state modernization plan hinted at the progressive expansion of examinations at the top levels of the civil service, in practice managerial professionalization was not a priority in the government’s agenda (interview with expert 34; Llano and Baumann, forthcoming). The only offices where professionalization was carried out were those in which “politicization was illegitimate or highly questioned,” as was the case of the Instituto de Estadísticas y Censos (INDEC; Institute of Statistics and Census) or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (interview with expert 34). The lack of trust in the neutrality of the bureaucracy, in a context of intense polarization, prompted the government to reproduce the logic of discretionary appointments at the managerial level. Nevertheless, politicization at senior and middle levels of the managerial hierarchy was limited by the existence of both formal laws and informal barriers. The main formal restrictions to politicization, which were not specific to any office or ministry, were the legal obstacles to firing managers who had won their positions through competitive exams. By contrast, informal restrictions varied across ministries, as the margin of discretion for making appointments fluctuated based on the required level of expertise: politicization tended to be more costly in offices where technically complex tasks were undertaken (Alessandro 2013; Hollibaugh, Horton, and Lewis 2010). The predominantly technical duties of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Agroindustry functioned as barriers to patronage. During the previous administration, politicization pushed those informally set limits by setting up clusters of discretionary appointments in offices that were considered strategic—­for example, by replacing the professional managers of

From Politicians to Managers

INDEC (in the case of the treasury) or by colonizing the office of the secretary of international trade (in the case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Clusters were also created in offices that had presence in the provinces through local delegations such as the secretary for family agriculture, where the influence of political organizations was high. The Macri administration eradicated these practices and restored longstanding traditions aimed at preserving the accumulated expertise of career professionals (interview with foreign affairs official 13; interview with treasury official 7; interview with treasury official 8). Limits to politicization varied within ministries. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there had always been informal appointment practices that regulated the distribution of executive positions. Historically, a quota was set aside for career diplomats on the basis of meritocratic procedures. Members of the diplomatic corps were assigned positions with responsibilities that were in line with their diplomatic activity (70 percent), while administrative agencies (like the Budget Office and the Office of Human Resources, among others) were occupied by functionaries who were subject to the SINEP appointment process (30 percent). During the Kirchners’ administrations this and other informal agreements were broken, resulting in an increase in political appointments (interview with foreign affairs official 10; interview with foreign affairs official 13). In some offices within the treasury, whose performance depended on the advice of technocratic experts, the practice was to acknowledge the expertise of these high-­level technocrats in order to secure their support (interview with treasury official 2). The reinstatement of former INDEC managers, who were removed during the Kirchner era, epitomized the reestablishment of these practices during the tenure of Macri’s new coalition government (interview with treasury official 7). In the Ministry of Agroindustry, the technical nature and territorial reach of the ministry led to differential levels of politicization at the managerial level. A number of positions were set aside for career bureaucrats based on a set of key competences. In some cases, what was there (that is, the professional bureaucracy) was left untouched. Instead, the new government created new units within the ministry and appointed its own people. Furthermore, meritocratic principles tended to be more closely followed at the center, while the degree of discretion tended to rise in provincial delegations, where political appointments were distributed according to a more partisan logic—­ despite being informally mediated by professional criteria (interview with agroindustry official 16; interview with agroindustry official 17; interview with agroindustry official 19).

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In contrast, the Ministry of Social Development was characterized by a higher degree of political permeability. Politicization was channeled primarily through the setting up of new political structures and the use of politically trusted appointees to control strategic managerial positions. The rotation of executives was low in administrative agencies, although it was higher in the offices that were in charge of finances and procurement, where new, trusted, executives were appointed. In general, it is estimated that the displacement of career personnel was not massive (interview with social development official 21; interview with social development official 22). The expansion of the political structure as a strategy for effective governance went hand in hand with a process of rationalization and depoliticization of the career bureaucracy. After the new administration took office, 11,000 civil service examinations that had been carried out during the previous government, as well as 24,000 temporary appointments that had been made in the last two to three years of Kirchnerism, were revised, as they were suspected of being the result of political manipulation and politicization.18 Moreover, a limit was imposed on the number of temporary hires, which could not exceed the numbers of late 2016. The policies of adjustment and the firing of clientelist appointments resulted in the termination of 10,662 temporary contracts, or approximately 5 percent of the entire federal workforce (Llano and Baumann, forthcoming). The Macri administration did not make patronage appointments at the lower strata of bureaucracy. The small number of hires that were made at this level tended to represent genuine administrative needs, and in some cases, such as the INDEC, they were even subject to informal selection procedures (interview with treasury official 8). Rationalization practices replaced the use of temporary hires, which had been an instrument for building “camporist armies” (interview with foreign affairs official 9). To sum up, the Cambiemos government pursued a strategy of politicization from the top through the creation of new organizational units within the administration (new ministries, new secretaries, etc.) headed by political appointees and the discretional appointment of senior public managers in established units and depoliticization from below by the suppression of temporary contracts and the review of career-­t rack appointments made by the previous administrations. In short, the government attempted to “balance things while incorporating its own people,” a practice that resulted in the resetting of the boundaries between politics and public administration (interview with expert 34).

From Politicians to Managers

REPLACING POLITICIANS WITH MANAGERS The motivations behind patronage appointments can be technical, political, or a mixture of both. Rulers use discretionary hiring practices to reward their followers, compensate their allies, or to control the design and implementation of public policy. When the latter occurs, the desire to exert control over the bureaucracy stems from the desire to implement the party platform or to co-­opt the bureaucracy in the service of party interests (Kopecký et al. 2016; Scherlis 2012). The change of administrations from Cristina Kirchner to Macri marked the passage from a political type of patronage to a technocratic one, with only a minimal level of considerations associated with the political requirement of rewarding political allies. During the Cristina Kirchner era, political appointments in both senior positions and middle levels of the federal administration were aimed at aligning the bureaucracy with the government’s political project, whereas low-­level positions were used to build up a political machine from within the bureaucracy for the benefit of either President Cristina Kirchner or political leaders from her inner circle such as La Cámpora and Kolina, among others (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018; Panizza, Peters, and Ramos 2019). In contrast, the Macri administration sought to inject the administration with expertise through discretional appointments for senior positions, with the goal of reinforcing the effectiveness of public policy without affecting the positions of mid-­and low-­level career civil servants. The motivations for patronage appointments were strictly tied to the roles of the appointees. The typology of patronage roles developed by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos, which is based on two interrelated features: the nature of trust between patrons and political nominees, and the type of skill-­sets privileged in the appointees, is useful for analyzing this aspect. The combination of trust and skills results in four main roles: party professionals and political apparatchiks combine partisan trust with technical and political skills, respectively, while programmatic technocrats and political agents are defined by nonpartisan trust with either technical (programmatic technocrats) or political skills (political agents). The PRO administration criteria for appointments privileged technicoprofessional skills and personal trust. Although the presence of experts has always been significant in Argentina’s presidential cabinets (Camerlo 2013), technical skills acquired an unusual degree of importance during the Macri administration. Professionalism was the requirement that cut across all patronage appointments: nobody could be nominated without passing an “apti-

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tude test,” while political abilities were downplayed and marginalized (interview with UCR official 26). Appointments combined technicoprofessional knowledge with personal trust characteristic of programmatic technocrats. The weight of partisan connections was low and tended to be concentrated in the top hierarchies and certain policy areas. Only 17.3 percent of cabinet officials were actively engaged in a political party (14.5 percent of which were actually members of one). Within this group, 68.3 percent were PRO activists and 23 percent were UCR activists, while the rest were members or sympathizers of the other parties that composed the coalition (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017). Considering the government’s negative view of both political parties in general and of the managerial skills of politicians in particular, appointers prioritized experience in the private sector. The idea was to replace professional politicians appointed to senior management positions within the administration with executives that could run government like a business (Alcántara Sáez 2010). This ideology of managerialism and efficiency sought to displace political ideology by reinforcing the figure of the politically neutral manager (Vommaro and Morresi 2014). Regardless of the appointees’ origins, the main goal was that they “do the job” (interview with expert 30). The dominance of these criteria was reflected in the administration’s recruitment sources. The PRO emphasized a type of recruiting that was external and nonpartisan that cohered with its practice of downplaying politics (interview with expert 30). Following the template of the PRO’s cabinet of porteños (people from the city of Buenos Aires), the federal government was primarily composed of professionals and technocrats who had no prior experience in public administration, and of PRO politicians who came from the private sector but had already been part of the Buenos Aires city government (Vommaro and Morresi 2014). In President Macri’s first cabinet, 22 percent of its members had only worked in the private sector, 30 percent had only occupied positions in the public sector, and 48 percent had experience in both (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017). The appointees’ occupational background determined the type of role that prevailed within each ministry. In this regard, the nature of the backgrounds configured a type of cabinet that had not been seen since the return to democracy. The political team of the governmental alliance can be divided into the following groups: (1) former appointees from the Buenos Aires city government, (2) NGOs and foundations, (3) CEOs and corporate leaders, and (4) political leaders from the PRO’s coalition partners (Canelo, Castel-

From Politicians to Managers

lani, and Heredia 2017; interview with expert 33; interview with PRO official 25; Vommaro and Gené 2017). The PRO’s national rise came with a shift in government teams from the Buenos Aires city government to their corresponding federal offices: the Ministries of Modernization, Education, Social Development, Production, and Transport. Experience in the public sector, partisan trust, and technical skills were the predominant criteria in these appointments. Because of their profiles and the key role that they played in designing and implementing public policy, these appointees can be classified as party professionals, as defined in the typology of Panizza, Peters, and Ramos. This group represented 28 percent of all the highest political positions and, within the analyzed ministries, carried significant weight in the Ministry of Social Development (52.2 percent), though they had only marginal influence in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (13.3 percent) and a minor presence in the Ministry of Agroindustry (7.7 percent) and the treasury (6.7 percent) (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017; interview with PRO official 25; interview with social development official 20; interview with treasury official 1). Some top positions were also occupied by political leaders from the PRO’s coalition partners. A number of ministries, including the Ministry of Agroindustry, were distributed among the PRO’s allies on the basis of partisan criteria and President Macri’s personal preference. Appointments, however, were made without consulting the parties. Rather, the appointment of officials from allied parties depended on the strength of their personal relationships with the president, a minister, or some other political leader who was close to the administration. These appointees can also be classified as party professionals because their inclusion considered both their political origins and their technical skills (Vommaro and Gené, 2017; interview with UCR official 26). Some of the PRO’s party professionals doubled as what can be labeled technocratic commissars, a category that describes commissars that control the bureaucracy on the basis of their technical rather than their political skills, a type of role that is not considered in the typology used here. Technocrats were appointed not just at the top of the administrative hierarchy but also to lower-­t ier offices, particularly in the ministries controlled by the PRO’s coalition partners because of the president’s lack of trust in the technoprofessional capabilities of the political appointees that controlled the ministries (interview with expert 34). The administration replicated the managerial style that was applied in the

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Buenos Aires city government by incorporating officials without any prior political experience who came from civil society, think tanks, and the business world (Vommaro and Morresi 2014). A significant percentage (45.5 percent) of Macri’s first cabinet worked at private sector foundations, NGOs, and other types of cultural, research, religious, sporting, or professional organizations, while many also came from the business community (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017). According to the typology by Panizza, Peters and Ramos, these appointees can be classified as programmatic technocrats because they possessed specialized knowledge about different issues of public policy and were bound to the government through a type of nonpartisan trust. Within this category, it is possible to identify a group of pure programmatic technocrats, who made up almost a third of appointees (28 percent). These technocrats came from think tanks closely linked to the PRO, particularly from Fundación Pensar, an organization that had been responsible for developing government plans and assembling a team of advisors. Overall, the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Agroindustry received most of these appointees (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017; interview with agroindustry official 19; interview with PRO official 25). Another group of officials with a strong technocratic profile consisted of former corporate managers, whose presence across multiple ministries led some commentators to call the Macri administration a “CEOcracy.” Discretional appointments also included leaders of big private sector corporations, who tended to concentrate in specific areas. Indeed, 31.3 percent of cabinet members had held high-­and mid-­level management positions in the private sector. An unusual feature of the government was the inclusion of CEOs, in varying proportions, in all ministries, even those that had political significance. CEOs held positions in both high-­and mid-­level offices. In the analyzed ministries, their share was particularly high in the treasury (40 percent), though they were somewhat less prominent in the Ministry of Agroindustry (26.9 percent), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (26.7 percent), and the Ministry of Social Development (8.7 percent), where they were in charge of offices that dealt with finance and administrative tasks (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017; interview with PRO official 25; interview with social development official 21; Vommaro and Gené 2017). Another group of appointees consisted of leaders from business associations, who accounted for 10.9 percent of senior positions in the federal government. In the Ministry of Agroindustry, half of the executive posts were held by leaders of important agricultural associations, such as the Confederación Intercooperativa Agropecuaria, the Sociedad Rural Argentina, and

From Politicians to Managers

Confederaciones Rurales Argentinas, among others (Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia 2017). Expertise was prioritized: these were people who either knew or came from the agricultural sector (interview with agroindustry official 16; interview with agroindustry official 18). Other appointees came from a foundation with close links to the PRO: the G25. The objective of this organization was to recruit businesspeople, leaders, and professionals from the private sector with an interest in government. Accordingly, its slogan is “private talent, public drive.” During 2016, about 223 G25 adherents joined the federal government (Moreno 2018; interview with PRO official 25). Thus, officials who came from the business world could be classified as CEOcrats, given that they were included to provide managerial skills rather than specialized knowledge. They could also be labeled corporate technocrats, whose expertise, institutional affiliations, and ability to coordinate policies with the private sector were valued. Finally, other top posts were filled with experts from universities that were considered friendly to the government and had no ties to the “Nac & Pop” (national and popular) world of mainly Peronists academics and intellectuals. Other positions were held by classic technocrats or members of elite corps, as was the case at both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and INDEC (see table 1.2) (interview with expert 30; interview with expert 31; interview with expert 32). To sum up, patronage roles were strongly shaped by the PRO’s worldview and social bases. Politics was disregarded and displaced by a type of expertise that was associated with values and practices from the business world and civil society. More specifically, efforts were made to improve government efficiency by transposing organizational models and managers from the private sector to the public sector. The lack of trust in politics, coupled with its management style, led the Macri administration to marginalize the permanent bureaucracy by building teams from the top down and by bringing in officials with backgrounds that were unusual in Argentine politics. Designing public policies and implementing them efficiently became the dominant motivation behind political appointments. Patronage was oriented toward the technical rather than the political disciplining of bureaucrats. Expertise became the guiding principle for making appointments, which was primarily combined with criteria of personal trust and, less frequently, of partisan trust. Political skills were not valued. Given that the transfer of technical knowledge from the private sector into government implied the relocation of those who possessed it into different positions in the public sector, the high number of appointments of this nature resulted in the configuration of a subspecies of roles that cut across the typology’s different categories (table

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Table 1.2. Source of recruitment, jurisdiction, criteria, and roles of political appointees Source

Ministry

Selection Criteria

Roles

Former officials from the Buenos Aires city government

Social Development

Technical expertise Partisan trust

PRO party professionals Technocratic commissars

NGOs or other types of organic foundations (Pensar, etc.)

Social Development Agroindustry

Technical expertise Nonpartisan trust

Programmatic technocrats

Agroindustry Treasury

Technical expertise with an emphasis on “managerial skills” Nonpartisan trust

CEOcrats Corporate technocrats

Allied parties

Agroindustry Treasury

Minimal technical expertise Partisan trust subject to kinship with the president

PRO party professionals

Public administration

Foreign Affairs Treasury

Technical expertise Classic technocrats

CEOs and business leaders

Source: Table created by the author based on data from Canelo, Castellani, and Heredia (2017), as well as interviews.

I.2). Within the category of programmatic technocrats, it is possible to find CEOcrats and corporate technocrats, who were defined by their managerial backgrounds and their organizational affiliations. Furthermore, some party professionals became commissars who were in charge of monitoring the bureaucracy from a technical standpoint.

CONCLUSION The characteristics of the patronage politics that the PRO-­led administration implemented was related to the class alignments and worldviews of its supporters, who came in the majority from the middle and upper classes, the business sector, and certain think tanks. It was also related to the context in which the new party appeared, which was shaped by a partially collapsed party system and a profound lack of trust in politics and an emphasis on the

From Politicians to Managers

Table I.3. Types and subtypes of patronage roles Technical skills

Political skills

Partisan trust

Party professionals (either from PRO or from coalition partners, or as technocratic commissars)

Apparatchiks

Nonpartisan trust

Programmatic technocrats (pure, classic, and corporate technocrats; also CEOcrats)

Political agents

Note: Strikethrough text indicates that these subtypes were not corroborated in this case.

values and practices that came from the private sector, with a strong class bias. A political context of party fragmentation facilitated the emergence of this new party, which was erected around an outsider who was looking to introduce a new way of doing politics. This resulted in the formation of a personalist organization, without any effective power independent of its leader, or from government structures. This provided President Macri with ample room to make political appointments at his discretion and without partisan interference. Hence, the prevalence of individualistic, deinstitutionalized patterns of political appointments reflected the party’s low level of politico-­ organizational autonomy. This logic of personalist, informal designations was reproduced within the unstructured coalition government under the hegemonic leadership of the PRO. Simultaneously, the intended substitution of politics for technical expertise as the main guideline for public action led to a radical change in the sources of patronage recruitment. Civil society and business organizations replaced parties as the main suppliers of high-­level officials, on the premise that business management skills would improve bureaucratic performance. Technical and managerial capabilities emerged as the main criteria for political appointments, in lieu of political skills. Political careers suffered a radical transformation: engaging with NGOs, think tanks, or organizations linked to corporations became an inevitable step in the path toward obtaining a political post. This type of patronage politics, which was based on personalized, nonpartisan, and external appointments from the business world and civil society, configured a new type of technocracy that was made up of officials with atypical backgrounds, at least for Argentina’s political system. The goal of

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making public policy more efficient required the rise of a new public sector executive elite composed of CEOs, experts, and partisans that came from the private sector. Patronage power was thus focused on building a superstructure that would be placed above a discredited bureaucracy. At this political vortex, managers, experts, and politicians with a nonpartisan background were appointed to improve government efficiency and exercise technical control of the bureaucracy. Certainly, the weak institutionalization of the political party system and the low autonomy of the ruling party in relation to the president shed light on the variation in patronage roles during the first period of Macri’s government. The characteristic fluidity of the Argentine party system favored the emergence of an alternative strategy for the construction of a new political party around a nonpolitical leader, with practically no existence outside the state apparatus. A party that sought to govern without the counterweights of appointments made under a traditional party logic meant retreating into personal trust and professional expertise as guiding criteria to be able to technically control the inherited bureaucracy.

REFERENCES Abal Medina, Juan Manuel, and Julieta Suárez Cao. 2003. “La competencia partidaria en la Argentina: sus implicancias sobre el régimen democrático.” In El asedio a la política. Los partidos latinoamericanos en la era neoliberal, edited by Marcelo Cavarozzi and Juan Manuel Abal Medina, 163–82. Buenos Aires: Homo Sapiens. Aberbach, Joel D., Robert D. Putnam, and Bert A. Rockman. 1981. Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Albalá, Adrián. 2016. “Presidencialismo y coaliciones de gobierno en América Latina: Un análisis del papel de las instituciones.” Revista de Ciencia Política 36 (2): 459–79. Alcántara Sáez, Manuel. 2010. “Los partidos y la profesionalización de la política en América Latina en 2010.” Working Paper 1, Instituto de Iberoamérica, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. Alessandro, Martín. 2013. “El elefante en la habitación: el estudio de la presidencia en Argentina.” In La dinámica del poder ejecutivo en América: estudios comparados sobre la institución presidencial, edited by Martín Alessandro and Andrés Gillio, 63–92. Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública. Amorim Neto, Octavio. 1998. “Cabinet Formation in Presidential Regimes: An Analysis of 10 Latin American Countries.” Paper prepared for the 21st International Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, September 24–26.

From Politicians to Managers Amorim Neto, Octavio. 2013. “Cálculo presidencial: diseño ejecutivo de políticas y designación de gabinetes en las Américas.” In La dinámica del poder ejecutivo en América: estudios comparados sobre la institución presidencial, edited by Martín Alessandro and Andrés Gilio, 239–68. Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública. Bohoslavsky, Ernesto, and Sergio Morresi. 2016. “El partido PRO y el triunfo de la nueva derecha en Argentina.” Amérique Latine histoire et mémoire. Les cahiers ALHIM 32. https:/­/­ doi.org/­10.4000/­alhim.5619. Calvo, Ernesto, and María Victoria Murillo. 2008. “¿Quién reparte? Clientes partidarios en el mercado electoral argentino.” Desarrollo Económico 47 (188): 515–42. Canelo, Paula, Ana Castellani, and Marina Heredia. 2017. “Observatorio de las élites. Informe no. 1.” Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales. http:/­/­w ww.unsam .edu.ar/­institutos/­idaes/­observatorio-­elites-­argentinas/­informeN1.pdf. Carty, Kenneth. “Parties as Franchise Systems: The Stratarchical Organizational Imperative.” Party Politics 10 (1): 5–24. Camerlo, Marcelo. 2013. “Gabinetes de partido único y democracias presidenciales. Indagaciones a partir del caso argentino.” América Latina Hoy 64: 119–42. Chudnovsky, Mariana, and Laura Cafarelli. 2018. “Los cambios en las estructuras organizacionales del Estado y su vínculo con la composición del empleo público. Argentina, 2003–2016.” Foro Internacional 58 (2): 275–312. Coutinho, María Eugenia. 2013. “De Alfonsín a Kirchner: la presidencia institucional como herramienta para la autonomía presidencial.” In La dinámica del poder ejecutivo en América: estudios comparados sobre la institución presidencial, edited by Martín Alessandro and Andrés Gillio, 185–209. Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública. Cruz, Facundo. 2016. “Cambiemos, esa coalición de nuevo tipo.” La Nación, October 2. https:/­/­ www.lanacion.com.ar/­opinion/­cambiemos-­esa-­coalicion-­de-­nuevo-­t ipo-­nid1942551. Ferraro, Agustín E. 2006. “Una idea muy precaria. El nuevo servicio civil y los viejos designados políticos en Argentina.” Latin American Research Review 41 (2): 165–82. Ferraro, Agustín E. 2011. “A Splendid Ruined Reform: The Creation and Destruction of a Civil Service in Argentina.” In International Handbook on Civil Service Systems, edited by Andrew Massey, 152–78. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Geddes, Barbara. 1996. Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Oakland: University of California Press. Gervasoni, Carlos. 2018. “Argentina’s Declining Party System: Fragmentation, Denationalization, Factionalization, Personalization, and Increasing Fluidity.” In Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse, edited by Scott Mainwaring, 255–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordín, Jorge. 2001. “The Political and Partisan Determinants of Patronage in Latin America, 1960–1994: A Comparative Perspective.” Paper prepared for the workshop Parties, Party

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Mercedes Llano Systems and Democratic Consolidation in the Third World, Francia, at European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions of Workshops, Grenoble, France, April 6–11. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heclo, Hugh. 1977. A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Hollibaugh, Gary E., Gabriel Horton, and David E. Lewis. 2010. “Presidents and Patronage.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 22–25. Iacoviello, Mercedes, and Mercedes Llano. 2017. “Confianza mata mérito: el impacto de la concentración de poder presidencial en la gestión de recursos humanos en el Estado argentino.” Revista Temas y Debates (33): 91–105. Iacoviello, Mercedes, Mercedes Llano, and Conrado Ramos. 2017. “Alta Dirección Pública Latinoamericana: marchas y contramarchas.” Revista de Gestión Pública 6 (2): 173–214. Iacoviello, Mercedes, Diego Pando, and Mercedes Llano. 2021. “Public Administration in Argentina: Characterization and Analysis of the Political-­Institutional Dynamic.” In The Emerald Handbook of Public Administration in Latin America, edited by B. Guy Peters, Conrado Ramos, and Carlos Alba Tercedor. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Secretaría de Gestión y Empleo Público. 2018. “Informe Trimestral de Empleo Público.” Estimates made based on Informe Trimestral de Empleo Público (ITEP). 1 (1). Published December 2018. https:/­/­w ww.argentina.gob.ar/­inap/­publicaciones/­itep. Kopecký, Petr, Peter Mair, and Maria Spirova, eds. 2012. Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kopecký, Petr,  Jan-­Hinrik Meyer-­Sahling, Francisco  Panizza, Gerardo  Scherlis,  Christian Schuster,  and Maria Spirova. 2016. “Party Patronage in Contemporary Democracies. Results from an Expert Survey in 22 Countries from Five Regions.” European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 416–31. Levitsky, Steven, and María Victoria Murillo. 2008. “Argentina: From Kirchner to Kirchner.” Journal of Democracy 19 (2): 16–30. Llano, Mercedes. 2017. “Discusión sobre las relaciones entre política y administración pública en América Latina: patronazgo y burocracia una interacción inexplorada.” Revista Enfoques 15 (27): 43–67. Llano, Mercedes. 2019. “Los condicionantes políticos de los procesos de profesionalización en América Latina. Un modelo de cambio institucional.” Foro Internacional 59 (2): 437–78. Llano, Mercedes, and Ingrid Baumann. Forthcoming. “Tendencias y escenarios de reformas en la profesionalización del empleo pública en América Latina y el Caribe.” In Reforma y Modernización del Estado en América Latina: Tendencias y Escenarios, edited by Oscar Oszlak. Caracas: CLAD. Mainwaring, Scott. 2018. “Party System Institutionalization, Predictability, and Democracy.”

From Politicians to Managers In Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse, edited by Scott Mainwaring, 71–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mair, Peter. 1994. “Party Organizations: From Civil Society to State.” In How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies, edited by Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair, 1–22. London: SAGE. Malamud, Andrés. 2008. “¿Por qué los partidos argentinos sobreviven a sus catástrofes?” Iberoamericana 8 (32): 158–65. Malamud, Andrés. 2016. “La izquierda argentina.” Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica 16 (3): 21–27. Malamud, Andrés. 2019. “Cambiemos le debe su posibilidad de reelección a que Cristina esté enfrente.” Infobae, March 2. https:/­/­w ww.infobae.com/­politica/­2019/­03/­02/­andres -­malamud-­cambiemos-­le-­debe-­su-­posibilidad-­de-­reeleccion-­a-­que-­cristina-­este-­enfrente/­. Malamud, Andrés, and Miguel De Luca. 2016. “¿Todo sigue igual que ayer? Continuidad y ruptura en el sistema de partidos argentino (1983–2015).” In Los sistemas de partidos en América Latina, 1978–2015, edited by Flavia Freidenberg, 27–68. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-­Instituto Nacional Electoral. Mattina, Gabriela. 2016. “Mauricio Macri y PRO en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (2001–2011): una mirada a la construcción de liderazgos partidarios en la Argentina poscrisis.” In Política Subnacional en Argentina: enfoques y problemas, edited by Sebastián Mauro, Victoria Ortiz de Rozas, and Martín Paratz Vaca Narvaja, 261–90. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires. Mauro, Sebastián. 2016. “El imperativo estratárquico y los actores extrabipartidistas. Los casos del PRO y del PS (2003–2013).” In Política Subnacional en Argentina: enfoques y problemas, edited by Sebastián Mauro, Victoria Ortiz de Rozas, and Martín Paratz Vaca Narvaja, 227–60. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires. Moe, Terry. 1985. “The Politicized Presidency.” In The New Direction in American Politics, edited by John E. Chubb and Paul E. Peterson. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Moe, Terry. 2013. “Presidentes, instituciones y teoría.” In La dinámica del poder ejecutivo en América: estudios comparados sobre la institución presidencial, edited by Martín Alessandro and Andrés Gillio, 15–62. Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública. Moreno, Matías. 2018. “Cómo funciona el G-­25, el semillero del PRO que suma aliados del sector privado.” La Nación, December 7. https:/­/­w ww.lanacion.com.ar/­politica/­como -­f unciona-­g-­25-­semillero-­del-­pro-­suma-­nid2189272. Mustapic, Ana María. 2013. “Los partidos políticos en la Argentina: condiciones y oportunidades de su fragmentación.” In ¿Cuánto importan las instituciones? Gobierno, estado y actores en la política argentina, edited by Carlos Acuña, 249–90. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno. Oszlak, Oscar. 1999. “The Argentine Civil Service: An Unfinished Search for Identity.” Re-

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Mercedes Llano search in Public Administration, vol. 5, edited by James L. Perry, 267–326. Stamford, CT: Jai. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. The Politics of Patronage in Argentina and Uruguay under Two Left-­of-­Center Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Perfil. 2016. “Confirman 6200 despidos y el cese de convenios con universidades públicas”. February 3, 2016. https:/­/­w ww.perfil.com/­noticias/­politica/­el-­gobierno-­confirmo-­6200-­ despidos-­y-­la-­finalizacion-­de-­contratos-­con-­universidades-­20160203-­0040.phtml. Peters, B. Guy, and Jon Pierre. 2004. “Politicization of the Civil Service: Concepts, Causes, Consequences.” In Politicization of Civil Service in Comparative Perspective: A Quest for Control, edited by B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre, 1–13. New York: Routledge. Remmer, Karen L. 2007. “The Political Economy of Patronage: Expenditure Patterns in the Argentine Provinces, 1983–2003.” Journal of Politics 69 (2): 363–77. Salas, Eduardo. 2015. “Una larga marcha hacia la consolidación del ingreso y promoción por concursos en el Sistema Nacional de Empleo Público de Argentina.” 20th Centro Latinoamericano de Administración para el Desarrollo International Congress on the Reform of the State and Public Administration, Lima, November 10–13. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2008. “Gobierno de partido y partido de gobierno: la consolidación del partido estatal de redes en Argentina.” Iberoamericana 8 (32): 165–70. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2009. “Patronage and Party Organization in Argentina: The Emergence of the Patronage-­Based Network Party.” PhD diss., Leiden University. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2012. “Designaciones y organización partidaria: el partido de redes gubernamentales en el peronismo Kirchnerista.” América Latina Hoy 62: 47–77. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2013. “Presidentes y partidos en América Latina: la excepcionalidad del peronismo en el contexto latinoamericano.” Politai: Revista de Ciencia Política 7: 29–50. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2015. “Problemas del sistema partidario argentino: de la estatización a la peronización.” In Desafíos para el fortalecimiento democrático en la Argentina, edited by Gabriel C. Salvia, 33–44. Buenos Aires: Centro para el Desarrollo y Apertura de América Latina and Fundación Konrad Adenauer. Skigin, Natan, Iván Seira, and Facundo Cruz. 2015. “Cambiemos: un gabinete de coalición desbalanceado—­Argentina, 2015.” Coaliciones políticas en América Latina: análisis en perspectiva multinivel, November 30. https:/­/­w ww.coalicionesgicp.com.ar/­2015/­11/­30 /­cambiemos-­un-­gabinete-­de-­coalicion-­desbalanceado-­argentina-­2015/­. Suppo, Sergio. 2019. “Cambiemos: tormenta en la tormenta.” La Nación, March 3. https:/­/­ www.lanacion.com.ar/­opinion/­c olumnistas/­c ambiemos-­t ormenta-­e n-­l a-­t ormenta-­l a -­parte-­y-­el-­todo-­nid2226410.

From Politicians to Managers Tagina, María Laura. 2016. “Elecciones 2015 en Argentina: Cambio de ciclo.” In Elecciones y cambio de élites en América Latina, 2014 y 2015, edited by Manuel Alcántara Sáez and María Laura Tagina, 229–52. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca-­Aquilafuente. Torre, Juan Carlos. 2003. “Los huérfanos de la política de partidos: Sobre los alcances y la naturaleza de la crisis de representacion partidaria.” Desarrollo Económico 42, no. 168: 647–66. Vommaro, Gabriel. 2015. “La nueva derecha argentina y las paradojas de este tiempo.” Horizontes del Sur 2: 198–205. Vommaro, Gabriel, and Melchor Armesto. 2015. “¿Nuevos políticos en el partido, viejos políticos en las listas? Reclutamiento partidario y división de trabajo político en PRO en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.” Pasado Abierto 2: 110–32. Vommaro, Gabriel, and Mariana Gené. 2017. “Argentina: el año de Cambiemos.” Revista de Ciencia Política 37 (2): 231–53. Vommaro, Gabriel, and Sergio Daniel Morresi. 2014. “Unidos y diversificados: la construcción del partido PRO en la CABA.” Revista SAAP 8 (2): 375–417.

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2 Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Sérgio Praça, Fernanda Odilla, and João V. Guedes-­N eto

B

razil is widely regarded in the comparative politics literature as a country in which the tensions between bureaucrats and politicians illustrate the dilemmas of building coalitions, managing state-­owned enterprises, and providing basic public services (Ames 2001; Bersch, Praça, and Taylor 2016; Schmitter 1971). Patronage appointments are at the heart of this tension. They are distributed according to different criteria, such as cementing governing coalitions or as part of a complex incentive scheme to make bureaucrats work according to presidential directives. In this chapter we study the politics of patronage appointments at the upper levels of Brazil’s federal public administration across three presidencies from 2011 to 2019. More specifically, we analyze political officeholders’ motivations for making patronage appointments, map the main roles played by appointees, and explore the institutional and agency factors that account for variations in the numbers of patronage roles. In the literature on presidential politics in the United States, political appointments are said to be used to control agencies in which presidents have greater chances of influencing outcomes (Hollibaugh 2018), those that have policy-­relevant functions (Krause and O’Connell 2016), and those that are dominated by opposing political groups (Hollibaugh and Rothenberg 2018). Similarly, Moore (2018) finds that presidents are more prone to appoint political allies when confronted by opposition from the Senate. This reflects the

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bipartisan nature of US politics, where cooperation with a different party is now unlikely to materialize. The Brazilian party system is considerably different. First, presidents are seldom able to assemble and manage a stable majority coalition from the start of their term (Ames 2002; Amorim-­Neto, Cox, and McCubbins 2003). Presidential parties seldom elect more than 15 percent of the 513 legislators in the Câmara dos Deputados (the lower house of the legislative branch). Thus, they must negotiate with a host of small parties that resemble “cartel parties” (Katz and Mair 1995) in their hunger for pork-­barrel projects and political appointments. Regardless of whether this may be seen as a low-­cost strategy for governability (Alston and Mueller 2006; Pereira and Mueller 2004), this mechanism of governance reflects the clientelistic nature of Brazilian politics (Mello and Spektor 2018). Furthermore, Brazilian presidents have numerous proactive and reactive powers. Besides possessing veto power, they are the sole initiators of budget legislation, as well as of economic policy. Additionally, presidents can enact executive decrees (medidas provisórias) at will—­though these measures can be rejected by congress later. This facilitates “the desired governability without significantly degrading the representative system” (Morgenstern, Polga-­Hecimovich, and Shair-­Rosenfield 2013, 64). These arguments do not mean that Brazil can be governed easily. On the contrary, the impeachment of two presidents since redemocratization in the late 1980s suggests the opposite. Political constraints force presidents to engage in strategic behavior to maintain governability throughout their administrations. The combination of strong powers, multiple office-­seeking cartel parties, and the relatively large public sector makes patronage a strategy at the heart of political stability in Brazil. Patronage appointments are one of the most important links between presidents and political parties. They might also be used—­counterintuitively, in a country known for its high levels of corruption and clientelism—­as conduits for bureaucratic and professional expertise. High-­level patronage appointments attract and reward civil servants who wish not only to receive promotions but also to influence policymaking, instead of merely carrying out orders from politicians (Schneider 1992). In analyzing presidential strategies for patronage appointments in Brazil, we consider roughly twenty-­three thousand appointments at the highest level of the federal government. We drew information from an original dataset that combines official human resources data with party affiliation data from the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Electoral Court). We complement our quantitative analysis with off-­the-­record interviews conducted with roughly seventy top civil servants between 2016 and 2019.1 We benefit from the considerable

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differences in the presidential profiles to compare how heads of government used their resources to govern. In this sense, we compare the appointment strategies of a left-­w ing highly institutionalized party in the administration of Dilma Rousseff, Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT); a centrist large catchall party in the administration of Michel Temer, Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB); and a right-­w ing outsider in the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, Partido Social Liberal (PSL). Using the theoretical framework and typology proposed by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos Larraburu (2019; this volume) our main findings suggest that the low level of party institutionalization in Brazil and the relatively high level of bureaucratic autonomy and expertise of the civil service are the main drivers behind the logic of patronage appointment distribution. Programmatic technocrats—­that is, appointees with expertise but no partisan ties to politicians—­are the largest category among appointees in all three administrations.2 The lack of party institutionalization is reflected in the fact that the share of party professionals (operationalized as partisan tenured civil servants who were politically appointed for a leadership position) and political apparatchiks (purely partisan appointees with no career in the public service) are low. This happens despite the well-­documented relevance of political appointments to satisfy the office-­seeking nature of junior coalition members. In line with the expectations of this volume, we demonstrate that whereas patronage appointments are heavily used by elected officials to secure governability, these are not based on party membership. The lack of partisan bonds is compensated through a different patronage mechanism. We demonstrate that the share of political agents (appointees with no ties to political parties or the civil service) is considerably high—­from around 25 percent during Rousseff and Temer’s tenure to around 35 percent in Bolsonaro’s first six months. This, again, reflects the low level of party institutionalization and the pervasiveness of personal relationships in Brazilian politics.

BRAZIL’S POLITICAL SYSTEM In this section, we introduce the political context in which political appointments are made in Brazil. Some of the aspects that will be discussed in this section were already mentioned. For instance, the country has an exceedingly fragmented party system, in which the president is never able to govern without a multiparty coalition. This is directly related to the distribution of appointments (which reward the support of office-­seeking parties) and even corruption scandals that motivated multiple administrative reforms.

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Party System and Coalition Presidentialism

Mainwaring (2018) argues that party systems are becoming more institutionalized in different parts of the world. Even though the development of political parties in Brazil is uneven, this process of institutionalization has become evident especially if we consider the three main political blocs in the country. That is, the left-­of-­the-­center Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) is typically described as the main party in the country especially given its consolidated membership basis (Samuels and Zucco 2018). In the right-­of-­ the-­center, the main player has been the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), led in the recent past by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Between 1994 and 2018, most of the country’s recent democratic history, these were the only parties that reached the second round of presidential elections (Kingstone and Power 2017). Representing the centrist bloc, the Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB) has been the main pillar of every presidential coalition, regardless of whether the PT or PSDB had the presidency. Furthermore, it has often had control over a plurality of seats in both congressional houses and a considerable number of governors. The country’s party system cannot, however, be summarized by these three parties. There are more than thirty parties in the country, most with representation in the legislature. The way presidents develop coalitions to obtain, at least for certain projects, the support of a considerable share of congress merits special consideration. The study of presidential coalitions has been the focus of prominent scholars including, among others, Ames (2002), Limongi and Figueiredo (1998), and Pereira and Melo (2012). Power (2010) suggests that this academic debate includes three stages: (1) pessimism, when scholars often saw deadlock and lack of cooperation between presidents and legislatures; (2) optimism, when scholars tended to praise the ability of (at least certain) presidents in setting the policy agenda; and (3) normal politics, which approximated the study of presidential coalitions in Brazil to those assessing parliamentary coalitions in Europe. The election of the outsider Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 represented a watershed in this coalition process. Coming from a largely unknown political party of which he had just recently become a member, the right-­w ing president could have been regarded as a threat to the process of party institutionalization (Hunter and Power 2019). Yet some facts suggest that whereas Bolsonaro could have sought to bend the country’s institutions, it seems that the institutions are bending Bolsonaro. Following what other presidents have done to dialogue with congress, the outsider president appointed politicians from

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traditional parties to key ministries and chose experienced centrist politicians to represent the government in the legislature. Through these and other strategies, Bolsonaro has been trying to co-­opt the Centrão (literally, the big center), the nickname of the large bloc of centrist (rent-­seeking) parties. Consider one of the main strategies adopted by presidents to hold coalitions together: pork-­barreling. That is, presidents allocate money to projects sponsored by legislators to obtain their support and, in some cases, the support of their parties. Bertholini, Pereira, and Renno (2018) recently argued that this strategy should also be considered policy. By doing so, presidents are responding to the needs of certain citizens, even if the initial interest is to consolidate legislative support. Here, we advance the proposition that patronage appointments to the bureaucracy are another strategy to hold coalitions together. We are not the first to do this in reference to Latin America or even Brazil (for some examples, see Limoeiro and Schneider 2017; Lopez and Praça 2015; Lopez and Praça 2018; Pereira et al. 2017). Yet this is often forgotten in other discussions that consider coalition formation in the country. Presidents, under different contexts, have used political appointments to increase efficiency in the policy process at the same time appointments were essential tools in keeping coalitions together. In other words, appointments are a tool for governance in terms of both policy implementation and political stability. Consider the first year of a new administration. The initial stage of coalition formation involves decisions about which ministries will remain in place and which new ones will be created, as well as which parties or political groups will be in charge of them. This often involves the distribution of top management positions. The second stage takes place after the election of relevant boards in the legislative houses, such as the Leadership (in Portuguese, Mesa Diretora), and committees’ chairpersons. The larger the party, the more positions of leadership they are likely to obtain so that they can make more political appointments (at least indirectly). New waves of negotiations may take place if the balance of power shifts in Congress (for example, when politicians move to different parties) or during the approval of divisive bills. If the relevance of political appointments is clear for presidents, why should they matter for elected officials and their parties? According to one interviewee, “politicians can use appointments to influence the priority of certain procurement processes. DNIT [Departamento Nacional de Infraestrutura dos Transportes, National Department of Transport Infrastructure] is an example. This is a strategic agency, and, despite the technical capacity of its civil servants, they often had to cede to external pressures. Whenever the minister was replaced, they would change coordinators as well. These types

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of changes were common especially during Temer’s presidency” (interview 3). Here, the argument that “pork is policy” (Bertholini, Pereira, and Renno 2018) is easily translated into “appointment is pork.” “Appointees manage budgets,” explains another interviewee. “Approving the budget for a project may be dependent on bribes being paid to the political party in charge of the agency. Even though this is illegal, it is very common and justifies the fight between parties for agency control” (interview 4). The recent corruption scandal at the state-­owned oil company Petrobras is an example of how patronage appointments become sources of illegal campaign financing and illicit enrichment. According to Limoeiro and Schneider (2017, 25), “The unfolding Lava Jato scandal reveals the worst aspects of coalitional presidentialism. The vast majority of kickbacks from Petrobras and other SOEs [state-­owned enterprises] came from construction and procurement contracts.” In January 2011, President Dilma Rousseff took office packing a lot of promises into her inaugural address. From eradicating extreme poverty to modernizing and simplifying Brazil’s tax system, the newly elected president also promised, among other things, to protect the public interest and to be permanently vigilant against corruption. This was a natural response to the corruption scandals that were not uncommon in the two previous administrations of her party, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was president. Rousseff acknowledged in her speech that she and her vice-­president, Michel Temer, were elected with the support of a large party coalition and also said she was reaching out for a helping hand from the opposition parties, as well as from the social segments of the electorate who were not with her in the electoral journey. The electoral coalition supporting Rousseff obtained the majority of seats in both houses of congress. Combined, the nine parties elected 61 percent of the 513 seats in the Câmara dos Deputados and 64 percent of the 81 seats in the Senado Federal (federal senate). In Congress, she also relied on the support of eight other parties which had a combined total of 51 seats in the Câmara dos Deputados. However, lessons from Brazil’s political history show that the stability of coalitions is not necessarily the rule in executive-­ legislative relations. As noted earlier, cabinet formation (Amorim Neto and Borsani 2004) and the use of pork and other tradable political currencies (Raile, Pereira, and Power 2011) are crucial tools for political bargaining and coalition management. In the past several decades Brazilian presidents have been building their coalitions by giving jobs in the bureaucracy to political parties (Geddes

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1996). Accordingly, supporters from six parties from Rousseff’s electoral coalition were appointed as cabinet ministers. Combined, they headed 28 of the 37 ministries. Smaller parties (such as Partido Trabalhista Cristão and Partido Social Cristão), got lower positions within the executive branch while the mid-­sized Partido Progressista (now, Progressistas) was awarded the Ministry of Cities—­holder of one of the largest budgets in the federal government. Rousseff later created two new ministries to accommodate other coalition members. By 2013 she had 39 ministries, and 77 percent of them were led by partisans of eight different parties. Further, the Ministry of Micro and Small Enterprises was created that year, which was assigned to the newly created but mid-­sized Partido Social Democrático. The president’s party, PT, had 44 percent of all cabinets, while the vice-­president’s MDB was in charge of 15 percent of them. As Bertholini and Pereira (2017) note, the less proportional the cabinet, the less satisfied are the coalition partners, potentially increasing the cost of governing and coordination problems. The workings of Rousseff’s coalition can be related to the country’s economic and political context. Facing a severe economic crisis and protests all over the country, the president required intense resource distribution to keep her coalition in place. Yet, as new corruption scandals were exposed by Operação Lava Jato, the costs of legislative support became unbearable (Mello and Spektor 2018). From December 2015 to August 2016, Rousseff faced an impeachment process that finally removed her from power with 61 out of 80 votes in the Senado Federal and 367 out of 513 votes in the Câmara dos Deputados. Temer became the interim president during the impeachment process and subsequently took office after his predecessor was removed. A traditional politician from the large, centrist MDB, Temer was still interim president when he organized a multiparty coalition with nineteen parties—­a record even for Brazilian standards. Eleven of them were awarded ministries. The new executive branch comprised parties that were in Rousseff’s coalition but also representatives from the opposition parties (PSDB, Partido da Social-­Democracia Brasileira; DEM, Democratas; and PPS, Partido Popular Socialista). However, the number of cabinet ministers was downsized to twenty-­seven, and Temer’s first cabinet was strongly criticized for consisting entirely of white men. During one of the worst economic crises in Brazil’s history, Temer formally took office as president in August 2016, promising to put the country on the right track. He tried to implement austerity packets and ambitious economic reforms, which made him highly unpopular. Temer also announced the cut of dozens of thousands of positions of trust in the public sector. Fur-

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

thermore, his coalition was strong enough to approve extensive reforms, including a constitutional amendment imposing an expenditure cap, the flexibilization of labor laws, and considerable changes in the provision of high school education. Massive protests, corruption scandals, and the economic crisis led to a significant renewal in Brazilian politics—­at least when it comes to elected leadership. For the first time since 1994, the center-­r ight PSDB did not reach the second round of a presidential election. The PT, which had been the winner of both rounds in the past four elections, came in second in both rounds in 2018. The newly elected president, Bolsonaro, had been a federal representative since 1991 but he had little or no relevance in congress. Now, as the leader of an outsider right-­w ing bloc, he became president. Different from his predecessors, Bolsonaro’s coalition had only two fringe parties—­the PSL and the Partido Renovador Trabalhista Brasileiro (PRTB). The polarization in the presidential election also reflected the composition of the legislature. The PT and the PSL—­the parties that managed to go to the second round of the presidential election—­elected the largest number of seats in the lower chamber: 56 and 52, respectively out of 513. In the Câmara dos Deputados, the PSL built a coalition with 13 other parties that, combined, had a total of 351 seats. In an attempt to guarantee political support and to accomplish his electoral promises, Bolsonaro started his term appointing 22 cabinet ministers, combining people with a military background, technocrats with conservative values, and partisans affiliated to 5 parties. Despite the large number of legislative seats nominally controlled by the PSL-­led coalition, this does not mean that Bolsonaro faced fewer difficulties in governing. As noted earlier, coalition formation does not mean that unity is the norm. Most of Bolsonaro’s supporters were political newcomers. Forty-­ seven out of PSL’s fifty-­t wo members were elected as congressional members for the first time. In the first months of government, Bolsonaro and his sons—­ Eduardo (a member of the lower house) and Flavio (a senator)—­fought for the party’s leadership and had a disagreement with the party’s founder over the control of campaign funds. This ultimately led to Bolsonaro leaving the PSL. As this chapter is being written, the president remains with no official party affiliation. After taking office, Bolsonaro continued his campaign rhetoric, insisting that he had a different governing style than his predecessor and that he would resist horse-­t rading in the Brazilian congress. What can be observed, however, is that his lack of support in congress imposed important defeats not only to his administration but also to him personally.

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Civil Service Structure

In 1988 Brazil adopted the classic principles of a Weberian professionalized bureaucracy (Cornell, Knutsen, and Teorell 2020).3 Under this system, civil servants can be recruited only through a formal examination system. In practice, tenure is automatically granted after a probation period (three years) and civil servants are subject to special employment laws. Before the enactment of the 1988 constitution, there was an unknown number of career and noncareer civil servants appointed by political criteria. Tenure was automatically granted to those who had been active for more than five years without the need to pass any public exams.4 The new constitution did not abolish political appointments, although it regulated how appointments should be distributed among those who already work in the public service and those who do not: “trust positions [cargos de confiança], exercised exclusively by civil servants holding a tenured position, and commissioned positions [cargo comissionado], to be filled by career civil servants in the cases, conditions and minimum percentages stipulated by law, are intended only for managerial, supervision and advisory roles.”5 Moreover, article 37 of the constitution also established the principles of legality and impersonality: “The direct or indirect public administration of any of the branches of the Union, states, Federal District and municipalities, shall obey the principles of legality, impersonality, morality, publicity, and efficiency.”6 According to the principle of legality, career and noncareer servants must be in full compliance with the law and all their actions need to be within the limits set by law. Offering political appointments to spouses, for example, violates the principle of legality and the constitution, according to the supreme court’s binding precedent n. 13. The impersonality and impartiality principles, moreover, are frequently presented as synonyms, or at least closely related to the principle of legality, meaning that all citizens should be treated equally, without discrimination, and according to what has been established by law and/­or policy and regulatory frameworks. As of July 2019 the federal civil service in Brazil had 10,186 patronage positions called Direção e Assessoramento Superior (DAS). There are six levels of appointments that can be divided into two groups: First is DAS 1–3, which are the lower-­level appointments, yet still high-­level positions. There are 6,980 appointees in this group. Second is DAS 4–6, the highest levels, which we consider in this chapter. There are 3,200 appointees in this group. The remainder of the chapter provides more detail on who these DAS 4–6

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Table 2.1. Legal aspects of the federal appointment system in Brazil FCPE 2016 Law 13,346/16

DAS 1–3 1970 Law 5,645/70

DAS 4 1970 Law 5,645/70

DAS 5–6 1970 Law 5,645/70

Formally appointed by

Minister

Minister

Minister

Casa Civil

Career civil servant

Required

Quota (50%)

Quota (50%)

Quota (60%)

Status

Mixed

Share in federal civil service

1.8%

1.1%

0.3%

0.2%

Share among appointees

52.7%

32.4%

32.4%

5.3%

Year of creation Initial legislation

Low level Mid-managers

High administration

Note: The information presented in the table is valid for 2019.

appointees are, what they do, how politicians choose them, and what skills and roles are they expected to fulfill. We summarize in table 2.1 the most relevant aspects of this appointment system. The first element highlighted in the table is that while DAS posts have been available since the early 1970s, a recent reform implemented the Função Comissionada do Poder Executivo (FCPE), which is a type of appointment that can be granted only to those who already hold the status of career civil servant. As the table shows, there are quotas for career bureaucrats among DAS 1–4 (50 percent) and DAS 5–6 (60 percent). Following the reforms, the proportion of DAS shrank considerably. In 2019 over half of the appointees were FCPE. We provide more information about these positions in the sections below. In Brazil, the president and/­or chief of staff, cabinet ministers, and the executive-­secretary within each ministry are the formal patrons, who are, in most cases, entitled to make political appointments. Informally, however, political parties—­the president’s or those of members of the coalition—­ congressional members, representatives of interest groups, and/­or regional groups can also act as patrons, depending on the level of their political influence. Since 1972 the president, the Ministério da Casa Civil (Office of the Presidency), and other ministers have the legal authority to appoint DAS 5–6. Yet

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from the military regime (1964–1985) until most of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration (1995–2003), the president controlled such appointments. As of 1999 the Secretaria Geral da Presidência da República (General Secretariat of the Presidency) is the office responsible for authorizing such appointments. More decentralized, DAS 4 are appointed directly by ministers and, since 1993, have required only the approval of the president. These mechanisms became more centralized in 2003 when the newly elected left-­w ing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) took office. After appointing his close ally José Dirceu as minister of the Casa Civil, Ordinance 1,056/­2003 gave the Casa Civil the power to appoint DAS 5–6, as well as certain DAS 4 positions. These were positions such as the chief of parliamentary affairs of every ministry. In 2005 the so-­called Mensalão scandal, a cash-­for-­vote scheme that used public funds to pay coalition parties for political support during President Lula’s first term (2003–2006), led to the imprisonment of José Dirceu (Michener and Pereira 2016). As a response, the federal executive issued Decree 5,497/­2005, requiring career civil servants to be appointed to at least 75 percent of DAS 1–3 positions and at least 50 percent of DAS 4. Noncareer civil servants (outsiders) were eligible for the remaining positions, as well as for the highest DAS levels. This was a radical change, considering the nonexistence of quotas before 2005 (L. A. Santos 2009). When Michel Temer (MDB) took office after Rousseff’s impeachment he implemented a new administrative reform through Law 13,346/­2016. This abolished roughly ten thousand DAS 1–4 positions, which were replaced by FCPE—­that is, commissioned positions that could be occupied only by career civil servants. This drastically reduced the role of outsiders in the federal government. In the following year, Temer enacted a new administrative reform based on Decree 9,021/­2017. This allowed greater flexibility for lower-­level appointments while making high-­level positions more restrictive. Following the previous regulation, 75 percent of the DAS 1–4 positions that were not transformed into FCPE were restricted to career civil servants. After 2017 this restriction was reduced to 50 percent. Yet it mandated that 60 percent of the appointments for DAS 5–6 had to be career civil servants. To be clear, whereas only tenured civil servants qualify, these are still discretionary patronage appointments that are not subject to open competition and can be removed at the will of the patron. The remaining 40 percent of appointments are open to outsiders. Bolsonaro (PSL) took office in January 2019. Following his right-­w ing anticorruption campaign, he enacted Decree 9,727/­2019 establishing min-

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

imum criteria for political appointments. Those appointed for levels 1 to 6 must meet basic (cumulative) requirements that include clean criminal records (especially for administrative matters in the public service), minimum experience in related tasks, and/­or relevant educational background. Furthermore, public bureaucracies were allowed to conduct public recruitment processes for DAS (a mix of career civil servants and outsiders) and FCPE (discretionally appointed career bureaucrats only). Yet there is evidence that some of these requirements have not been followed by the government. This is possible given the legal proviso that allows ministers to take responsibility for appointees—­for instance, based on the complementary Decree 9,723/­2019 that voided these requirements until June 20, 2019. In practice, ministers are often busy with political affairs. Thus, their executive secretary—­their main political appointee at the ministerial level—­is often tasked with coordinating political appointments. In this sense, executive secretaries often recruit DAS 5–6 and delegate to these the task of recruiting DAS 4. Formally, the president’s chief of staff is supposed to make all DAS 5–6 appointments. However, it would indeed be impractical for the president and/­or the chief of staff to assess every single appointment (Lopez and Praça 2015; Lopez and Praça 2018). Going in the opposite direction, whereas most appointments (from executive secretary to lower-­level DAS) are under the responsibility of ministers (Decree 9,794/­2019), it is not uncommon that the president or his close secretariat influence this process. In a recent publication, Peters (2018) suggests that the field of public administration could benefit from tools often used in other studies in comparative politics. Tsebelis’s (1995; 2002) veto power framework is one of them. Here, it is clear that the president and his secretariat can exercise their veto whenever appointments that are made by other patrons deviate from the interests of the presidency. Whereas different players (for example, elected officials, high-­level appointees, political parties) may also try to exercise veto power, they are obviously less influential than the president’s decision to bar an appointment. Consider the case of DAS 6. These positions are the highest under the bureaucratic structure in the Brazilian federal executive branch; over them, there are the executive secretaries, the cabinet ministers, and the president. DAS 6 appointees are responsible for designing public policies within their respective ministries. Also, they often deal with congressional members to discuss the drafting and amendment of laws and norms, including ordinary bills, constitutional amendments, and executive orders. Although the president’s chief of staff legally makes these higher-­level appointments, it is very

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common to see cabinet ministers creating a list of names that they send to the chief of staff for appointment. This means that informal appointment procedures will depend on the coordination between the president and his or her ministers based on the political salience of the topic and the ongoing trust relationship. According to a news report during Rousseff’s administration (Revista Época 2011), five employees were responsible for investigating potential appointees in the federal government. Once they were selected by the different ministries, names were sent to the Gabinete de Segurança Institutional (Institutional Security Office), and their curriculum vitae were submitted to the intelligence agency, Agência Brasileira de Inteligência. The agency would check the candidate’s criminal record, existing debts with the government, and board positions in private firms, among other issues. If any information raised suspicions, further investigation would be carried out. According to one interviewee, “the core idea of this assessment was to . . . safeguard the administration against problematic CVs” (interview 2). This severely delays recruitment procedures. According to the civil service rules, the chief of staff used to sign on behalf of the president the higher-­level appointments (DAS 4–6 and, in certain circumstances, 3). In 2019, as already mentioned, Bolsonaro’s administration changed the rules. Decree 9,794/­2019 gave more autonomy to cabinet ministers for nominations and established that the chief of staff is now officially responsible for signing appointments and dismissals only for DAS 6 holders. Yet the president still has the power to make appointments and dismissals of any DAS position at any time. Now, consider the role of political parties in informal appointment procedures. In each ministry, the executive secretary has key functions. Apart from acting as a patron and making appointments, this political appointee is also responsible for managing the ministry and releasing budgetary funds that frequently attract political attention. There are moments when the cabinet minister and executive secretary are members of different parties. In these cases, they may cooperate even though they have different partisan commitments. Even though political parties have no formal role in the appointment process, they influence elected officials and political appointees in the recruitment process. This influence is commonly identified in the literature on office-­seeking parties (Müller and Strøm 1999). Furthermore, parties function as information shortcuts (Downs 1957). Beyond informing voters, they also help political elites identify the loyalty of civil servants and potential ap-

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

pointees. That is, ministers, executive secretaries, and other decision-­makers use the partisanship of potential appointees as cues for their spheres of influence and allegiances. This helps to assess whether appointing someone would mean working with an ally or not, or even whether this could mean gaining political favors in the future. The interactions between political parties and informal appointment processes are replicated at different levels in the bureaucracy. The highest-­level patron is the president. Yet, given different types of restrictions (such as time, interest, potential candidates), she or he does not make most decisions by him-­or herself. Many of these attributions are delegated to lower-­level appointees, ranging from the president’s chief of staff to lower-­ranked DAS. Repeating a previous example, it is very common to see the executive secretary within the ministries selecting candidates for DAS 6 and DAS 5 and delegating to the holders of these two positions of trust the appointment of DAS 4 holders. Political parties may exercise indirect influence over appointments at all these different levels. This provides incentives for career civil servants and outsiders to become closer to parties as shortcuts to political appointments.

THEORETICAL EXPECTATIONS As Panizza, Peters, and Ramos Larraburu (2019, 148) note, “levels of party systems institutionalization as well as the nature of the links between parties and voters can be related to variations in patronage roles.” They propose a typology of patronage roles with four main categories: “party professionals, programmatic technocrats, political apparatchiks and agents” (Panizza, Peters, and Ramos Larraburu 2019, 150; this volume). They consider that party professionals and programmatic technocrats have technoprofessional skills that are important for patrons (elected officials or, more specifically, presidents), the former combining these skills with partisan trust and the latter with nonpartisan (mainly personal) trust. Political apparatchiks have political rather than technical expertise combined with partisan trust, while political agents have political expertise and patrons trust them on personal terms. In table 2.2, we use the categories of political trust and type of expertise to separate these four ideal types. Civil service laws and formal examinations tend to attract high-­skilled applicants looking for job stability and better salaries (Cavalcante and Carvalho 2017; Bacelar Filho 2003). Recent reforms have increased the benefits of developing a long-­term career in the public service, as well as of pursuing higher qualifications levels through educational programs (Abrucio 2007; Cavalcante and Carvalho 2017; M. H. Santos and Brito 1995).

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Table 2.2: Ideal types of political appointments Expertise

Political trust

No Yes

Technical Programmatic technocrat Party professional

Political Political agents Political apparatchiks

Since elected officials have policy interests that they aspire to be implemented, their enactment requires the availability of high-­level public sector managers and advisors with a mix of political and technical skills. As mentioned earlier, the large number of high-­level positions available for discretionary appointments and the lack of institutionalization of Brazilian parties make programmatic technocrats central players for the advancement of the officeholders’ policy interests. Even in countries with stable and strong parties, high public sector positions may be vacant for long periods due to the lack of qualified appointees that combine political trust and technical expertise (Mackenzie 2001). This explains, for instance, the constant reliance on think tanks and other lobbying organizations as suppliers of political appointees (Peters 2010). The lack of enough technically qualified party members explains why a large number of appointees are programmatic technocrats. Their expertise is used by patrons to pursue their policy interests (Geddes 1996) and is especially relevant in positions in which other types of political appointees do not have extensive experience (Codato and Franz 2018). Following this logic, we have formulated four hypotheses. Hypothesis 1: There is a high proportion of programmatic technocrats among high-­level patronage appointments.

As noted, party professionals are unlikely to exist in large numbers in Brazil because of the uneven level of party institutionalization. Yet this does not mean they do not exist. At least two factors explain their presence. First, certain policy areas or governmental bodies may have a natural alignment of high-­level civil servants with the ideological preferences of a given party. This is commonly identified in US politics (Bonica 2019; Chen and Johnson 2015) where, regardless of recruitment paths, bureaucrats’ personal preferences are aligned with those of certain partisan actors. After all, besides being bureaucrats, public sector employees are also citizens who have their political preferences. This is true for Brazil, where there are no restrictions to partisan affiliation among civil servants.

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Second, a professional civil servant may be affiliated with the president’s or the minister’s party to increase the odds of getting a patronage appointment. Aberbach and Rockman (1995, 844) affirm that “opportunists among the senior executives may adjust their views to make themselves more acceptable to the administration.” One of the mechanisms to express allegiance is to become a member of the principal’s party. Therefore, the absence of partisan experts might be compensated by ad hoc cooperation between political patrons and civil servants. In this sense, party professionals do exist, though at a limited proportion of total appointments. Hypothesis 2: There is a low proportion of party professionals in high-­ level patronage appointments.

According to Samuels and Zucco (2018), the PT is the main Brazilian party when it comes to long-­term popular support and membership basis. As a mass party reminiscent of Duverger’s (1954) characterization, it has a history of connection with the federal civil service (Silva 2015). Naturally, it will be more likely for this party to identify party professionals. In our timeframe, this should be evident in comparisons between Rousseff’s administrations and others. This type of appointee is more likely to be found in the social policy domain, in ministries such as education and health. As Prendergast (2007) has noted, intrinsic motivation is an important driver for joining the civil service, and we assume a larger presence of left-­leaning servants in these ministries. As aforementioned, this is in line with the distribution of political loyalists in other countries (Bonica 2019; Chen and Johnson 2015). The Bolsonaro government, in turn, is expected to have almost no party professionals. Populist presidents have very weak ties to political parties. This is certainly the case with Bolsonaro. The current Brazilian president was elected while belonging to a very small political party, the PSL (Hunter and Power 2019). He joined the party only at the last minute before the presidential campaign, and his links were so weak that he left the PSL in 2019, just one year after taking office. Furthermore, given the party’s small size and political irrelevance before Bolsonaro’s election, it most likely did not have rank-­and-­ file members within the federal civil service. Here, regardless of whether this was strategic or solely based on resource availability, we hypothesize that Rousseff appointed more party professionals than Bolsonaro. As Panizza, Peters, and Ramos Larraburu (2019; this volume) note, there are four types of political apparatchiks—­those appointees with high political skills but no robust technical expertise; party operators, who use their skills to help the government negotiate its political agenda with party leaders;

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commissars, who act as watchdogs in the administration to make sure that civil servants do not act against the president’s wishes; brokers, who, in their words, “mediate the particularistic provision of public goods between governments and voters”; and activists, who campaign for political parties, especially the president’s. In fragmented party systems, the appointment of political apparatchiks helps the president to attract office-­seeking parties to the governmental coalition (Indridason and Kristinsson 2013; Pereira et al. 2017). Yet in countries where parties are not highly institutionalized, the bonds between voters and political elites are not necessarily materialized through partisanship (Baker, Ames, and Rennó 2006; Novaes 2018). In these cases, informal connections become the norm. Thus it is unlikely that many political apparatchiks will be identified in the highest echelons of the Brazilian federal civil service; that is, in DAS 4–6 appointments. In this case, the core argument is that patronage appointments will still be distributed to attract office-­seeking support. Yet since there are low levels of party institutionalization in the country, appointees will hardly ever have formal links to political parties. These will be selected within the informal networks used by their patrons to seek election or the expansion of political power. Hypothesis 3: There is a low proportion of political apparatchiks in high-­level patronage appointments.

The expectations outlined for the Bolsonaro administration regarding party professionals should also be valid for political apparatchiks. As stated, the few links between populist politicians and political parties as well as the small size of Bolsonaro’s party explain this proposition. Here, we expand our proposition, since we expect Bolsonaro to have even fewer political apparatchiks and more political agents than both Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer. As previously argued, whereas Temer’s MDB is not as institutionalized as PT, it is much more established than Bolsonaro’s PSL. This makes it very unlikely that “party operators” and “commissars” will be present. We thus propose, as a subhypothesis, that Bolsonaro appointed fewer political apparatchiks than other presidents. Before moving on to the distribution of political agents, we highlight the relevance of programmatic technocrats, party professionals, and political apparatchiks in different contexts. During 2011–2016, Rousseff had a difficult time with her government’s coalition partners in a very fragmented legislature. Her policy focus was on infrastructure projects and an economic policy

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

package called Nova Matriz Econômica, with a developmental focus that, at least for part of that period, resulted in economic growth and high employment rates with inflation somewhat under control (Villaverde and Rego 2019). Given the relevance of the economic agenda in Rousseff’s first term, we expect to identify in this period a predominance of party professionals and programmatic technocrats in areas such as finance, planning, infrastructure, and social policies. Most of these areas were under the control of the PT—­as pointed out earlier, one of the few political parties in Brazil with technically skilled partisans. In her second term, on the other hand, we expect to identify an increasing number of political apparatchiks due to the necessity to bar the impeachment threat in congress. We predict that Dilma Rousseff appointed more party professionals and programmatic technocrats in the first term than in the second, and that political apparatchiks were more common in the second term. Political agents are appointees who lack technical and policymaking skills but have instead strong political ones. They are nonpartisan appointees that are chosen by presidents and officeholders to advance their political interests or to please interest groups, political dynasties (nepotism), religious organizations, the military, and so on. As previously argued, the low level of party institutionalization in Brazil forces politicians to rely on informal networks where political agents are likely to emerge. Additionally, presidents still have to satisfy other nonpartisan interests. As an adapted version of the “revolving door” in other countries (Peters 2010), Brazilian presidents will also appoint bureaucrats based on the need to co-­opt relevant support groups. Many of these derive from the patronage systems described by Faoro (1958) when discussing the relationship between certain families and other private interests in the country’s power system. Even though many of them will be part of the politicians’ informal networks, they bring to the government the support of relevant interest groups. Furthermore, they could bring relevant expertise; it should be no surprise that a share of political agents has previously worked in other administrations. Hypothesis 4: There is a high proportion of political agents in high-­ level patronage appointments.

In October 2018, Brazil took a turn toward right-­w ing populist governments and elected federal deputy Jair Bolsonaro as president. Having to deal with a very fragmented legislature, Bolsonaro did include a few partisan ministers in his cabinet, although most of his partisan ministers did not have public support from their parties’ leadership. Compared to Rousseff and

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Temer, Bolsonaro was expected to rely more on political agents, mainly to control agencies where he feared there were disloyal bureaucrats. Although initially he appointed political apparatchiks—­ mainly PSL partisans—­ to some ministries, he signaled that he preferred to be surrounded by loyalists to himself and his conservative values—­that is, political agents—­rather than apparatchiks loyal to political parties. This is especially true if we consider the presence of military personnel (or those who have been active in the military at some point in the past) and the close links between some of his ministers and the financial markets (Amorim Neto and Pimenta 2020). This reinforces our previous argument that Bolsonaro deviates from the traditional presidential profile. His lower reliance on political parties and greater links to other pressure groups makes it even more likely that the number of political agents in his bureaucracy will be higher than before. Furthermore, the current legislature is the most fragmented ever in Brazilian politics (Zucco and Power 2021). In this context, there is the possibility that the president will rely upon groups other than political parties to build support coalitions that will indirectly affect legislative behavior. Thus, we predict that Jair Bolsonaro appointed more political agents to high-­level positions than other presidents.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS This study relies on primary data collected from the Brazilian federal government and the federal electoral court. In compliance with transparency and accountability legislation, the federal government publishes a monthly report with the personal information of all federal employees.7 This includes over six hundred thousand public sector employees, ranging from professors to physicians and from ministers to administrative assistants. The report includes whether each employee is appointed to any trust or commissioned position (political appointees) and whether they are tenured. We used monthly data from 2011 on. After compiling this data, we combined it with information from the federal electoral court—­the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral. This consists of a list including all registered party membership in the country. Thus, it is possible to determine whether political appointees (and, in fact, any civil servants) are members of a political party at a given moment. The final dataset contains detailed information on each high-­ level political appointee (DAS 4–6) that allows assessing whether they are tenured and/­or partisans. Following the typology presented in the introduction to this book, we label each of them as a programmatic technocrat, party professional, political apparatchik, or political agent, based on the scheme

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Table 2.3: Categorizing political appointments Category Programmatic technocrat Party professional Political apparatchik Political agent

Tenured Yes Yes No No

Partisan No Yes Yes No

Table 2.4. Share of political appointments, 2011–2019 Rousseff Category

2011 N %

All civil 585,119 servants

-

Temer

2015 N % 627,427

-

2016 N % 632,485

-

2018 N % 630,689

-

Bolsonaro 2019 N % 622,335

-

DAS 22,103 3.8 22,080 3.5 17,993 2.8 11,566 1.8 10,186 1.6 DAS 4–6 4,754 0.8 4,859 0.8 4,479 0.7 4,388 0.7 3,206 0.5 FCPE 1,610 0.3 4,634 0.7 4,634 0.7 11,606 1.8 11,333 1.8

proposed in table 2.3. In brief, technical expertise is proxied by being a career civil servant, while political proximity with the principal is identified by party affiliation. Our data show that the share of political appointments has not surpassed 4 percent of all federal civil service since Rousseff’s first presidential term (table 2.4). Those in high-­level positions (DAS 4–6) represent less than 1 percent of the roughly six hundred thousand federal civil servants. As it happened with all DAS appointees, the share of DAS 4–6 considerably decreased throughout the time covered by this study—­these are the appointments we considered. The share of DAS 4–6 appointments went from 0.8 percent of all civil service in 2011 to 0.5 percent in 2019. The decrease in senior-­level patronage appointments took place while the size of the public service increased from 585,119 (2011) to 622,335 (2019), reaching a peak in the first year of Temer’s administration (632,485). However, the number is an underestimation of the total number of programmatic technocrats, as here we are considering DAS 4–6 only. FCPE, which are management positions available to career bureaucrats only, has increased considerably, especially after the reforms implemented by Temer. The inclusion of these appointments would considerably increase the already high share of programmatic technocrats. We present the overall distribution of 21,686 high-­level political appointments (DAS 4–6) in table 2.5. The first finding is the dominance of program-

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Table 2.5. Distribution of political appointments, 2011–2019 Category Programmatic technocrats Party professionals Political apparatchiks Political agents Total

Quantity 12,538 1,579 1,847 5,722 21,686

Share 57.8% 7.3% 8.5% 26.4% 100.0%

matic technocrats. This is in line with our first hypothesis, that this should be the largest category among appointees. Presidents care about policy especially in salient areas—­for instance, the economy (Campello and Zucco 2015). This highlights the relevance of policymaking in Brazil. Since presidents need experts to compensate for the lack of technical knowledge of their party members, career bureaucrats have an advantage in the discretional appointment process. This is enhanced by their experience of the process of appointment, as well as their knowledge of existing positions. In our second hypothesis, we predicted that the proportion of party professionals should be considerably low. As noted above, the category comprises appointees who combine technical expertise with partisan ties with their principals. This category had the lowest share among the four ideal types of appointments from 2011 to 2019. As stated earlier, this is explained by the low supply of partisans with enough technical expertise. Some of these party professionals are civil servants who became partisans to maximize their chances of being discretionarily appointed. One of our interviewees explained that “in the Ministry of Mining and Energy, there is no internal selection for DAS appointments. Most often, they pick someone who already is part of the team, works well, and has a good relationship with everyone. Then, that person gets the appointment.” This bureaucrat further explains that “directors do all they can to avoid losing appointment positions. If there is a vacancy, they rush to appoint someone from the team, so the sector doesn’t lose this DAS” (interview 1). The caveat of the second hypothesis is our expectation that this type of appointment was more frequent during the administration of Rousseff than when Bolsonaro was president. This is explained by the drastically different levels of institutionalization of the two presidents’ parties. Data in table 2.6 confirm this expectation. While party professionals represented 8–10 percent of Rousseff’s appointees, the share decreased to 6.5 percent during Temer’s presidency and was at a level of 5 percent in the first semester of Bolsonaro’s administration.

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019

Table 2.6. Political appointments by presidential term Rousseff 2011 2015

Temer 2016 2018

Programmatic technocrats

55%

59%

62%

57%

55%

Party professionals Political apparatchiks Political agents Total

10% 10% 24% 4,754

8% 9% 24% 4,859

6.5% 7.5% 24.5% 4,479

6.5% 9.5% 27% 4,388

5% 6% 34% 3,206

Type of political appointment

Bolsonaro 2019

Our third hypothesis concerned political apparatchiks—­appointees who are politically skilled partisans. We predicted that the frequency of this type of political appointment would be low. In table 2.5, we show that whereas the share is indeed relatively low (8.5 percent) if compared to programmatic technocrats, it still is higher than that of party professionals. This could be explained by the same factor that accounts for the small number of party professionals: the low institutionalization of the Brazilian party system. While the share of political apparatchiks is potentially larger, given the possibility of bringing partisans from outside the bureaucracy, this is still small given the limitations of the party system. We further hypothesized that Bolsonaro would be the president with the lowest share of political apparatchiks. This proposition was confirmed. During her first term, 10 percent of Rousseff’s appointees were political apparatchiks. The percentage decreased to 9 percent and even less during Temer’s first year (7.5 percent). Yet when Temer was about to leave office, the share had increased to a number comparable to Rousseff’s term—­9.5 percent. Under Bolsonaro, it drastically decreased, to 6 percent. Overall, the share of partisans (i.e., party professionals and political apparatchiks) was very low during the administration of President Bolsonaro (2019–2023): 11 percent. This compares to 20 percent—­almost double—­during Rousseff’s first term. In 2018, when Temer was president, the share was 16 percent. Again, this is explained by the low level of institutionalization of the president’s party and governmental coalition. We further proposed that we would identify significant differences when comparing Rousseff’s two presidential terms. First, the share of those appointees with technical expertise should decrease throughout time. This is the case among party professionals, which varied from 10 percent to 8 percent. Yet the share of programmatic technocrats increased from 55 percent to 59 percent. We also suggested that political apparatchiks should be more common in the

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second term. Our results also contradict this expectation, as there was a decrease from 10 percent to 9 percent. Whereas we did not theorize this trend, it is possible to speculate that this was a reaction to the corruption scandals. That is a replacement of political influence by technical expertise to avoid new judicial problems. Our fourth hypothesis concerned the share of political agents, which are the appointees who have political expertise but not necessarily a partisan relation of trust with their principals. Our data support our expectation that the share of political agents would be high, as we find that this is the second largest group among the four ideal types of political appointments—­an overall share of 26.4 percent. This reflects the low level of institutionalization of Brazilian politics. In different countries, as well as in Brazil, campaigns are brokered by local leaders rather than partisans (Holland and Palmer-­Rubin 2015). Once their principals are elected, these brokers are appointed to work in the government. This helps to explain the support for our prediction regarding the share of political agents during the first months of Bolsonaro’s administration in comparison to other presidents. Here, there was a surge in this type of appointment—­34 percent compared to no more than 27 percent in the same decade. In many cases, this results from the inflow of appointees with links to the military. A large share of Bolsonaro’s cabinet consists of retired officials from the armed forces (Amorim Neto and Pimenta 2020). While they have no partisan ties with their ministers or the president and no specific expertise in the ministries they were appointed to, their close political and professional ties with the new administration justifies their entry into the government. To be sure, we are not claiming that Bolsonaro was the only president to rely on such nonpartisan networks. As the data show, the share of political agents was considerably high in the previous administration as well. This is explained by the information networks involved in coalition building and government formation, as we discussed. They include, as already argued, political brokers with no partisan affiliation. Furthermore, following international experience (McGann 2016), thinks tanks, nongovernmental organizations, and other types of organizations often supply specialized labor to the government.

CONCLUSION Brazil is a particularly interesting case through which to consider the politics of patronage appointments because political appointments are so pervasive at the highest levels of the federal bureaucracy, and very few of them

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are subject to legislative approval (such as the governor of the Central Bank, ambassadorial positions, and some positions in infrastructure ministries). In other presidential systems such as the United States, it is usually much harder to make appointments without considering the interests of political parties. In their highly influential volume about coalitional presidentialism in Brazil, Figueiredo and Limongi (1999) describe bargaining between deputies and the president for appointment positions as a system of mutual threats that assures voting discipline for the president’s bills and electoral gains for the politician informally responsible for the appointment. Our findings show that there is some truth to this depiction. However, a large portion of high-­ level appointments are doled out according to technical criteria to appointees with no partisan trust (programmatic technocrats) and also a relatively high share of appointees that have neither technoprofessional expertise nor ties to political parties (political agents). We believe that it is crucial to consider party system institutionalization—­as well as the differences in organizational strength of specific parties—­to understand how presidents distribute high-­level patronage positions. Further studies can shed light on the specific mechanisms that link political agents to their patrons; the extent to which political parties vary in their ability to nominate affiliates of relatively high quality to patronage appointments; and how the policymaking capacity of bureaucratic agencies is affected by different types of appointees. This chapter does provide a picture of how patronage has worked in the past three presidencies, and that may foreshadow of what is to come.

REFERENCES Aberbach, Joel D., and Bert A. Rockman. 1995. “The Political Views of U.S. Senior Federal Executives, 1970–1992.” Journal of Politics 57 (3): 838–52. Abrucio, Fernando Luiz. 2007. “Trajetória recente da gestão pública brasileira: um balanço crítico e a renovação da agenda de reformas.” Revista de Administração Pública 41: 67–86. Alston, Lee J., and Bernardo Mueller. 2006. “Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 22 (1): 87–114. Ames, Barry. 2001. The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ames, Barry. 2002. “Party Discipline in the Chamber of Deputies.” In Legislative Politics in Latin America, edited by Scott Morgenstern and Benito Nacif, 185–221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019 Holland, Alisha C., and Brian Palmer-­Rubin. 2015. “Beyond the Machine: Clientelist Brokers and Interest Organizations in Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies 48 (9): 1186–223. Hollibaugh, Gary E. 2018. “Patronage Appointments and Agency Independence.” Journal of Politics 80 (4): 1411–16. Hollibaugh, Gary E., and Lawrence S. Rothenberg. 2018. “The Who, When, and Where of Executive Nominations: Integrating Agency Independence and Appointee Ideology.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (2): 296–311. Hunter, Wendy, and Timothy J. Power. 2019. “Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash.” Journal of Democracy 30 (1): 68–82. Indridason, Indridi H., and Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson. 2013. “Making Words Count: Coalition Agreements and Cabinet Management.” European Journal of Political Research 52 (6): 822–46. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1995. “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party.” Party Politics 1 (1): 5–29. Kingstone, Peter R., and Timothy J. Power. 2017. “A Fourth Decade of Brazilian Democracy: Achievements, Challenges, and Polarization.” In Democratic Brazil Divided, edited by Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power, 3–30. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Krause, George A., and Anne J. O’Connell. 2016. “Experiential Learning and Presidential Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy: Logic and Evidence from Agency Leadership Appointments.” American Journal of Political Science 60 (4): 914–31. Limoeiro, Danilo, and Ben Ross Schneider. 2017. “State-­L ed Innovation: SOEs, Institutional Fragmentation, and Policy Making in Brazil.” Working paper, MIT Industrial Performance Center, no. 17-­004. Limongi, Fernando, and Argelina Figueiredo. 1998. “Bases institucionais do presidencialismo de coalizão.” Lua Nova 44: 81–106. Lopez, Felix, and Sérgio Praça. 2015. “Critérios e lógicas de nomeação para o alto escalão da burocracia federal brasileira.” In Cargos de Confiança No Presidencialismo de Coalizão Brasileiro, edited by Felix Lopez, 107–30. Brasília: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada. Lopez, Felix, and Sergio Praça. 2018. “Cargos de confiança e políticas públicas no Executivo federal.” In Burocracia e Políticas Públicas no Brasil: Interseções Analíticas, edited by Roberto Pires, Gabriela Lotta, and Vanessa Elias Oliveira. Brasília: Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica/ ­E NAP. Mackenzie, G. Calvin. 2001. “‘Nasty & Brutish without Being Short’: The State of the Presidential Appointment Process.” Brookings Review 19 (2): 4–7. Mainwaring, Scott. 2018. “Party System Institutionalization, Predictability, and Democracy.” In Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse, edited by Scott Mainwaring, 71–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Sérgio Praça, Fernanda Odilla, and João V. Guedes-­Neto McGann, James. 2016. The Fifth Estate: Think Tanks, Public Policy and Governance. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Mello, Eduardo, and Matias Spektor. 2018. “Brazil: The Costs of Multiparty Presidentialism.” Journal of Democracy 29 (2): 113–27. Michener, Gregory, and Carlos Pereira. 2016. “A Great Leap Forward for Democracy and the Rule of Law? Brazil’s Mensalão Trial.” Journal of Latin American Studies 48 (3): 477–507. Moore, Emily H. 2018. “Polarization, Excepted Appointments, and the Administrative Presidency.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 48 (1): 72–92. Morgenstern, Scott, John Polga-­Hecimovich, and Sarah Shair-­Rosenfield. 2013. “Tall, Grande, or Venti: Presidential Powers in the United States and Latin America.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 5 (2): 37–70. Müller, Wolfgang C., and Kaare Strøm. 1999. Policy, Office, or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Novaes, Lucas M. 2018. “Disloyal Brokers and Weak Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 84–98. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado R. Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Pereira, Carlos, Mariana Batista, Sérgio Praça, and Felix Lopez. 2017. “Watchdogs in Our Midst: How Presidents Monitor Coalitions in Brazil’s Multiparty Presidential Regime.” Latin American Politics and Society 59 (3): 27–47. Pereira, Carlos, and Marcus André Melo. 2012. “The Surprising Success of Multiparty Presidentialism.” Journal of Democracy 23 (3): 156–70. Pereira, Carlos, and Bernardo Mueller. 2004. “The Cost of Governing: Strategic Behavior of the President and Legislators in Brazil’s Budgetary Process.” Comparative Political Studies 37 (7): 781–815. Peters, B. Guy. 2010. “The United States.” In Partisan Appointees and Public Servants: An International Analysis of the Role of the Political Adviser, edited by Chris Eichbaum and Richard Shaw, 180–97. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Peters, B. Guy. 2018. “Comparative Politics and Comparative Policy Studies: Making the Linkage.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 20 (1): 88–100. Power, Timothy. 2010. “Optimism, Pessimism, and Coalitional Presidentialism: Debating the Institutional Design of Brazilian Democracy.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 29 (1): 18–33. Prendergast, Canice. 2007. “The Motivation and Bias of Bureaucrats.” American Economic Review 97 (1): 180–96. Raile, Eric D., Carlos Pereira, and Timothy J. Power. 2011. “The Executive Toolbox: Building Legislative Support in a Multiparty Presidential Regime.” Political Research Quarterly 64 (2): 323–34. Revista Época. 2011. “A Lista Secreta de Dilma.” October 24.

Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019 Samuels, David J., and Cesar Zucco. 2018. Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans: Voting Behavior in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Santos, Luiz Alberto dos. 2009. “Burocracia profissional e a livre nomeação para cargos de confiança no Brasil e nos EUA.” Revista Do Serviço Público 60 (1): 5–28. Santos, Maria H., and Marcelo Brito. 1995. “Escolas de governo e profissionalização do funcionalismo público.” Revista Do Serviço Público 119 (1): 69–99. Schmitter, Philippe C. 1971. Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Schneider, Ben Ross. 1992. Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Silva, Sidney Jard da. 2015. Companheiros servidores: o sindicalismo do setor público na CUT. Santo André: Editora UFABC. Tsebelis, George. 1995. “Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism.” British Journal of Political Science 25 (3): 289–325. Tsebelis, George. 2002. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Villaverde, João, and José Márcio Rego. 2019. “O Novo Desenvolvimentismo e o desafio de 2019: superar a estagnação estrutural da economia brasileira.” Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 39 (1): 108–27. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zucco, Cesar, and Timothy J. Power. 2021. “Fragmentation without Cleavages? Endogenous Fractionalization in the Brazilian Party System.” Comparative Politics 53 (3): 477–500.

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3 Patronage in Chile A Process in Reconfiguration

Emilio Moya Diaz and Victor Garrido

C

hile has historically had one of the most highly institutionalized party systems in Latin America (Mainwaring 2018). However, since the second decade of the century, Chilean political parties have been in a phase of transition—­specifically, they have lost representativeness and legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenship (Garretón 2000). Lack of transparency within parties, weaknesses in internal democracy mechanisms, and little openness to renewal—­such as the distance of political parties from new actors and demands—­have contributed to a loss of legitimacy (UNDP 2014). In addition, following Luna and Rosenblat’s (2012) diagnosis, we are no longer in the presence of institutionalized and strongly programmatic political parties. In other words, Chilean parties are in a paradoxical situation, as they combine significantly high levels of electoral stability with social uprooting. Furthermore, the weakening of political parties has led to the emergence of new actors, such as think tanks, civil society organizations, and business associations that have an impact on political appointments. This paradoxical situation of the political parties has been much more evident after the social uprising of October 2019 and the meager electoral results obtained in later elections. In this sense, authors like Luna (2021) have argued that the Chilean party system can be metaphorized as “a hydroponic lettuce,” a reference to the parties’ lack of social roots. Instead, parties tend to operate as

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conglomerates of political elites with little capacity to mobilize voters behind a coherent political project. Another significant feature of Chile’s political system is the hyperpresidentialist nature of the executive branch. This historical feature of the Chilean presidency was further reinforced by the 1980 constitution. Specifically, the executive not only has the responsibility to implement laws but also plays a fundamental role in their formulation to the detriment of the powers of the legislative (Valenzuela 2011). Moreover, in the period under study for this chapter, presidents Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera both sought to lessen the influence of political parties. This can be explained by a number of factors, among these, the personal and political characteristics of both presidents, who ran their campaigns by prioritizing appeals to citizens rather than to party loyalists. In fact, Robert Funk (2011) argues that both Bachelet and Piñera replaced the force of ideology with the force of their personae, and that their political narratives emerged not from within their respective parties’ traditions but from the citizens’ demands at the time. More recently, corruption has emerged with force in the public debate, often contributing to criticism from citizens about the ways in which appointments are made. Several corruption scandals have come to light since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990. In fact, there were more than fifteen cases documented between 1990 and 2008. Among the cases that caused highest public concern were financial fraud at the Copper Corporation (Corporación del Cobre, CODELCO), also known as Davilazo; fraudulent losses in the state railways; misuse of public funds in Chile Deportes (Chile Sports); payment of bonuses above the legal salary in the Ministry of Public Works; and, more recently, the financing of electoral campaigns and political parties through false receipts linked to the companies Penta and SOQUIMICH (Chemical and Mining Society of Chile). These scandals have raised questions about accountability mechanisms, disclosure practices, transparency, the effectiveness of preventive mechanisms, and how governments recruit their officials. Our aim in this chapter is to study the practices of patronage appointments in Chile, using the typology created by Panizza, Peters and Ramos (2019), and to identify the mechanisms that shape these practices. The timeframe of this work comprises three presidential periods ranging from 2006 to 2018, including the first (2006–2010) and second (2014–2018) administrations of Michelle Bachelet, as well as the administration of Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014). Thus, in this chapter we seek to answer the following questions: (1) What is the scope of patronage appointments in Chile’s central

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public administration? (2) What are the prevailing criteria in the allocation of patronage positions? (3) What is the degree of incidence of politicians, political parties, and interest groups in the appointment process? (4) Do technical or political skills prevail in the selection of appointees? In line with the introduction to this volume, patronage appointments are defined here as the discretionary appointment of officials to the public administration by political parties, political officeholders, or by individuals or groups with political connections. When appointments are made by political parties, it is called party patronage (Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova 2012). Patronage is a constant phenomenon in world democracies. Max Weber (2012) pointed out that the objective of political parties in representative democracies is to achieve power through elections; this power gives ruling parties and political officeholders the legitimacy to appoint persons of their trust within the bureaucracy. Patronage relates to the process of recruitment in state bureaucracies. Said recruitment may be through one of two modes: a merit-­ based competitive process, or at the discretion of the officeholder (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2014, Scherlis 2013). This does not mean that there is no overlap between these two forms. On the contrary, there may be multiple interactions, and one mode may prevail over another. The meritocratic recruitment process follows normative standards and therefore is formally structured by principles of competition and transparency. This process enables public scrutiny, since it establishes certain forms of accountability. Patronage, on the other hand, is a recruitment mechanism in which political actors play a crucial role. Patrons appoint public sector personnel to perform a variety of roles, including monitoring the performance of the public administration and seeking a greater commitment to the government’s program from the public sector bureaucracy (Ramos, Panizza, and Peters 2018; Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova 2012). Patronage influences not only the design and implementation of public policies but also the political system (Gallo and Lewis 2012). It particularly affects the working of the party system and is shaped by it. It also influences the relations between parties and governments and the hierarchical relations between the government and the administration (Kenny 2015).

PUBLIC SECTOR APPOINTMENTS AND SENIOR PUBLIC MANAGEMENT Laws and regulations for the appointment and management of the civil service affect the scope of patronage. In the Chilean case, both the constitution and the administrative statute, Law 18.834 Estatuto Administrativo, regulate the appointment of public officials. The constitution (Article 32)

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states that the president can appoint and remove ministers of state, undersecretaries, mayors, and governors at her will. In addition, she may appoint and remove officials that the law calls “of her exclusive trust” and appoint other civil servants in accordance with the law. The administrative statute regulates the civil service career ensuring the rights to income, duties, labor rights, responsibility, and cessation of functions. An important aspect that defines this system is the tripartite model of employment that governs public sector employment in Chile: It consists of permanent employees (known as planta), fixed annual-­term personnel (contrata), and short-­term workers (honorarios). While the majority of the planta positions are career civil servants, a small part of them are “of exclusive trust”—­that is, they are subject to discretional appointment and dismissal by the corresponding authority. This authority can be the president of the republic or some head of service that Chilean law considers in its regulations. Secondly, contrata are fixed-­term positions appointed without a competitive recruitment process but subject to two conditions: (1) the contract lasts for one fiscal year, and (2) the number of these positions is capped at 20 percent of the number of corresponding planta employees. The hiring of short-­term employees for incidental and specific tasks is covered by the honorarios model. Honorarios have renewable contracts. They are not considered public sector officials and they are not hired through a competitive recruitment process (Rajevic 2018). What is problematic about the Chilean case is that while the latter two categories, contrata and honorarios, are supposed to include just a small number of public sector workers, in practice they make up over 70 percent of public employment in the central administration. In fact, in 2016 and 2017 contrata and honorarios made up 71 percent of public officials. This situation has a number of consequences. In the first place, contrata and honorario employment creates job insecurity for these employees. For example, contrata personnel can be dismissed at any time, since their contracts may include clauses allowing for their being hired “as long as their services are necessary.” Honorarios, hired to perform specific, temporary tasks, may end up working in permanent tasks. Secondly, these positions do not require open public competition, which can provide opportunities for patronage and nepotism. Senior civil servants have their own regime. The Sistema de Alta Dirección Pública (SADP; Senior Public Management System) is considered one of Chile’s most significant state modernization initiatives. It consists of the heads of the so-­called public services and their second tier of management (Levels I and II). There are currently over one thousand public servants within this system (Fraile 2018). The objective of the system is to provide gov-

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ernment bodies with proven leadership and management capacity in order to carry out public policies as defined by the political authorities. Although positions are competitive, trust criteria are taken into account in the selection process. A central element of the trust component is that the president has free choice from a list of three potential candidates. The president can also ask these state managers to resign at any time. This may be due to poor performance, failure to abide by specific public policies, or simply loss of trust. The president also has the power of temporarily appointing public sector managers for up to one year. In this way, meritocratic selection is combined with political discretion. This combination has generated mistrust in certain sectors of society. But as Mario Waissbluth (2008) points out, “the position has been, is and will continue to be of trust, as it should be. What this formula does is provide minimum necessary filters of aptitude. The authorities can also dismiss anyone at any time, as is the case of any company manager, and in this case it would be mandatory to carry out a new call through a competitive recruitment process.” The SADP is perceived as an improvement in the modernization of the Chilean state; nevertheless, it presents some flaws that relativize the success of its implementation. In 2016 a new law, Law 29.055, was approved that improves the system and aims to take care of certain weaknesses such as the nature of replacements. Interviewees presented a critical view of the system, suggesting that it is permeated by patronage logic and informal dynamics. The alternation of governments, transitory replacements that become definitive, and the political logic of allocations are seen as key factors that reveal a system that is not consolidated. “It has not resisted the alternation of governments. It is a system that collides with a culture that has not yet been modified.” (Gabriela, civil service expert, pers. comm., November 2016) “There has been progress, but not entirely; it is still in the maturing process. There are many replacements and that hinders professionalization in the system.” (Marcelo, former minister, pers. comm., March 2017) “If the system does not resist party alternation—­and it has not—­we have problems. The possibility of having replacements, and the logic and practices of the last 6 years have shown that officials rotate too much, associated to changes in electoral politics. There is no objective evaluation of their work.” (communication staff, civil service expert, pers. comm., October 2016)

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The development of the civil service in Chile stands out as an attempt at the modernization and professionalization of the state in Latin America. A report by the Inter-­American Development Bank titled Serving Citizens: A Decade of Civil Service Reforms in Latin America (2004–13) examines both progress and stagnation in the modernizing of civil services in Latin America and indicates that, within the region, Chile is in a favorable situation regarding the implementation of civil service modernization reforms. In fact, the report indicates that relative to the results of the year 2004, Chile had recorded a significant advance. The same study also argues that the implementation and expansion of the SADP and the application of competitive selection procedures were factors that contributed to Chile’s progress in improving the professional quality of the civil service (IADB 2014). Although the evaluation of the performance of the Chilean civil service is positive, there are some aspects that must be improved. First, in the same study, Chile’s lowest performance rating is in the merit dimension. This dimension is defined as “the guarantees of professionalism in the functioning of the civil service system and values.”1 Second, the SADP has had a high turnover since its inception. In fact, within the first month of Bachelet’s second administration, she dismissed around 52 percent of the public managers at the top hierarchical level. In 2010, when Piñera took office, he dismissed 64 percent of the managers at the top hierarchical level and 24 percent at the second level. Undoubtedly, these figures put the system in question (Abarzúa and Blanco 2014). Third, the merit selection system has a high financial cost. During the 2010–2016 period, $2.822 million were spent on average per year to carry out competitive searches. Fourth, the SADP is not yet established as a system because, as Waissbluth (2008) points out, “although contestability is transparent, the model only partially attracts political support; remunerations are low and in some cases clearly insufficient and there are excessive bureaucratic controls imposed on the senior executives.” Law 29.055 seeks to address some of these and other weaknesses such as temporary replacements ending up staying indefinitely in office and the high turnover that the system experiences during changes of government. However, the measures enacted by the law have not yet been properly evaluated to determine their effectiveness.

RESULTS FROM A SURVEY OF EXPERTS Studying and measuring phenomena associated with informality, such as patronage, is not an easy task. Researching these issues involves triangulating different techniques of data collection, since considering institutional

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data exclusively can generate problems of underestimation (Sautu 2004). We used a descriptive design of a mixed nature. Specifically, we applied two research instruments: a questionnaire with closed and open questions and a number of open, in-­depth interviews aimed at investigating issues not covered by the questionnaire. The key informants were officials and former government officials of presidents Bachelet (2006–2010/­2014–2018) and Piñera (2010–2014); for example, former state ministers, officials responsible for making political appointments at different levels of the state bureaucracy, party leaders, directors of think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who had ties to political parties, and experts in the public sector. In total, forty-­four experts participated in the study: fourteen key informants were interviewed in depth and thirty responded through the survey. The five areas of the central public administration we chose for the study were the General Secretariat of the Republic and the Ministries of Economy, Social Development, Interior, and Finance. We selected these public bodies because they recruit personnel with diverse professional profiles and thus can be deemed to be representative of a variety of state practices. Some emphasize technical aspects, others, political aspects. We applied the questionnaire to evaluate patronage appointments at three levels of the central government: (a) top: ministerial advisors, national director-­advisors, directors; (b) middle: area managers, division directors, coordinators and heads of large projects, departmental coordinators, heads of bureaus, consultants; (c) low: technical, administrative, customer service personnel, general services. The in-­depth interviews covered some questions included the survey as well as others such as motivations and causes for making the appointment; the role of the president in recent years; the role of regulations and the SADP (functioning, importance); and the role of unions, think tanks, and parliamentarians. With respect to the quantitative data, we used a descriptive univariate and bivariate analysis. We addressed the qualitative information through an analysis of descriptive content. Figure 3.1 shows the scope of patronage appointments in Chile’s central administration according to hierarchical levels. According to the survey results, the scope of patronage appointments is higher at the top of the administrative pyramid and declines at lower levels. At the top of the administrative hierarchy, close to 60 percent of respondents stated that “all” or “nearly all” appointments were discretionary designations. If we add respondents that considered that “many” appointments at this level were discretionary in nature, the percentage rises to 80 percent (all or nearly all: 57.1 percent; many:

Graph 1 Scope of political appointees at different hierarchical levels

PATronAGE in CHiLE

Figure 3.1 Scope of patronage appointments at different administrative levels. Source: Survey of experts 23.8 percent). Meanwhile, at the middle hierarchical level, just a third of respondents considered that all or nearly all designations were political in nature, and the figure falls to below 10 percent at the lower level of the administrative hierarchy. There are no significant differences at the ministerial level; that is, the trends observed at a general level are replicated in that area. In addition, the samples of respondents for each ministry are not so significant to generate a reliable comparison. Concerning who had real power of appointment, survey results show that presidents rather than parties had the main power in making discretional appointments. Six out of ten informants indicated that appointments were made by the president without consulting other actors (see table 3.1). Indeed, only 36.8 percent of respondents claimed that other actors, including political parties and political officeholders, were consulted in the appointment process. Key informants corroborated the survey results: “The level of consultation is close to 40 percent, no more. President Piñera, from the experience I had, consulted about half of the time, if that.” (Juan, political party member, pers. comm., December 2015). “There were ministers who never consulted and there were others, more committed to political issues, who did consult a lot.” (María, political party member, pers. comm., June 2016)

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Table 3.1. Who makes patronage appointments at the central state level? Who appoints

Percentage

Who is consulted (For those who responded “President with consultation”)

Percentage

President without consultation

63.2

Political party

95.2

President with consultation

36.8

Officeholder

4.8

Total

100

100

“The president does it without consulting, the minister usually asks the party a bit more.” (Esteban, political party member, pers. comm., March 2016).

As figure 3.2 illustrates, our data show that in the presidential periods we analyzed, presidents enjoyed even stronger influence than in the past in political appointments. Indeed, 71 percent of respondents point out that political parties have lost influence in political appointments. This situation can be explained by several factors. One is the personal characteristics of Piñera and Bachelet, who built their candidacies appealing to the citizenship rather than to traditional party faithful. The weakening of Chilean political parties can also be explained by their diminished interference in appointments (Luna and Rosenblat 2012; UNDP 2014). The role of parliamentarians also helps weaken the incidence of parties, since the former negotiate votes for a given project in exchange for appointments (Toro 2007). Finally, another explanatory factor may be hyperpresidentialism (Valenzuela 2011). The increasing influential role of presidents was also noted by key informants: “The three governments that you just mentioned, had a slightly weaker institutional relationship with the political parties, especially in the government of Sebastián Piñera.” (Andrés, academic, interview, July 2016) “In the formation of her [Bachelet’s] first cabinet the parties participated, but they did not have direct impact. Many of the ministers, although they came from the parties, had been working with her for a long time, and they were of her own personal trust, rather than of party trust.” (Marcelo, former minister, March 2017) “It is relative, since it depends a lot on the characteristics of the person who

Patronage in Chile

Figure 3.2 Influence of political parties in patronage appointments. Source: Survey of experts leads; in this case, the president.” (Luis, former undersecretary, pers. comm., January 2016)

While this does not mean that political parties have completely lost their influence on political appointments, interviewees point out that their influence has diminished: “They are still important, but they are losing relevance. Political parties are very precarious, deinstitutionalized, weakening the links with the voters and citizens.” (Marcelo, former minister, interview, March 2017) “Michelle Bachelet had her [so-called] citizen government, Sebastián Piñera moved toward the parties and Bachelet II the same. Today they have very little incidence. These parties have been displaced by parliamentarians.” (Roxana, think tank researcher, interview, April 2017)2

The last quote confirms what some authors have called the parliamentarization of politics (Barozet and Espinoza 2019), in which deputies and senators have increased their influence in political appointments, mainly through patronage practices. Likewise, it has been noted that in Chile patronage does not just involve jobs for votes. It is also used “to develop informal networks throughout the state apparatus in order to make possible

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Table 3.2. Main purposes of patronage appointments according to levels in the administrative hierarchy High Middle Low (Percentage (Percentage (Percentage very important) very important) very important) Implement policies

71.4

81

0

Control the administration

57.1

38.1

0

Articulate political support for the party or office holder

81

38.1

0

Reward militants Electoral politics

4.8 0

9.5 4.8

9.5 4.8

more fluid communications between the citizens and public institutions and among state departments, especially at local level” (Barozet and Espinoza 2019). With the survey, we sought to determine the patrons’ motivations for making discretionary appointments, the nature of the relation of trust between patrons and appointees, and the type of skills prioritized by patrons in the appointees. In line with the questionnaire applied across this volume, the following motivations were listed: policy design and implementation, control of the public administration, political articulation, rewarding of militants, and engaging in electoral politics. Motivations are not mutually exclusive; thus, respondents were asked to determine which ones they considered that patrons regarded as the most important. Our survey results show that motivations varied according to hierarchical levels (table 3.2). At the top level, policy design and implementation and political articulation were perceived by a significant majority of respondents as the most important motivations.3 At the middle level, implementing public policies was also perceived by 70 percent of respondents as a highly relevant motivation. Finally, at the lower level, rewarding militants and engaging in electoral politics were perceived as very important motivations, although, given the low level of patronage appointments at this level, values ​​are low (less than 10 percent of informants).4 According to the typology of patronage roles that informs this volume, the roles played by appointees are classified in terms of two sets of attributes: the nature of the relation of trust (partisan or nonpartisan) between patrons and appointees and the types of skills (professional or political) privileged in the appointees. Table 3.3 shows the results. There is no homogeneity in terms of

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Table 3.3. Attributes of political appointees by hierarchical level High Middle Low (Percentage (Percentage (Percentage very important) very important) very important) Independent technical capacity

38.1

23.8

4.8

Technical capacity with party trust

42.9

42.9

9.5

Technical capacity with personal trust

61.9

42.9

9.5

Political articulation Ability to reach the voter

61.9 28.6

38.1 9.5

0 19

the attributes that are prioritized by patrons when making appointments. As in previous sections, trust and skills varied according to hierarchical levels. At the top level, more than 60 percent of respondents believed that personal (presidential) trust and both technical and political skills were important attributes. At the middle level, technical capacities were regarded as particularly important, combined with either party or personal trust. Finally, at the lowest level, the most important selection criterion was the political ability to reach voters. Key informants’ replies corroborate the survey results: “It is a combination: in some cases, technical elements predominate, but [combined] with political affinity. Technical skills are important, but [combined] with political aptitudes.” (Luis, former undersecretary, interview, January 2016). “Trust, almost always, prevails. Personal political trust, more than institutional trust or the technical capacity that people have.” (Romina, political party member, interview, May 2016)

A TYPOLOGY OF PATRONAGE ROLES IN CHILE Panizza, Peters and Ramos (2019) created a typology of patronage roles that encompasses forms of patronage in both high-­and low-­level patronage administrations. By combining trust and skills, the typology defines different types of patronage roles. In the first category, party professionals are appointees who combine partisan confidence and technoprofessional skills. Second, programmatic technocrats combine technical competence with nonpartisan trust. The third category is apparatchiks—­appointees who combine par-

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tisan confidence with political skills, such as commissars, operators, electoral agents, and activists. Finally, political agents are those who combine nonpartisan confidence and political skills (cliques, electoral agents). Our survey results show that in Chile patronage roles vary according to hierarchical levels (see fig. 3.1 and table 3.3). According to the survey, the roles that predominate in senior positions correspond to what the typology calls party professionals and programmatic technocrats, with a preference for the latter. In the first line of the Chilean state bureaucracy, parties tend to appoint professionals that combine technical skills with party political militancy: so-­ called technopols, or party professionals. These actors maintain links with their parties’ political activities and are responsive to the policy guidelines of the parties. Also, results of the survey demonstrate that political articulation—­a quality associated with apparatchiks or party operators—­is very high as a motivation for appointments at the higher level. In turn, presidential and ministerial appointees are usually chosen mainly for their technical competences. They are programmatic technocrats (represented in the ministries under consideration by undersecretaries and ministerial regional secretaries, to name a few) who advise frontline politicians, thus fulfilling a technical role. These technocrats do not necessarily engage in political militancy but do have a certain sympathy for or affinity with the government, and are personally loyal to the appointer. These positions are easy to remove, as their employment contracts are based on interpersonal trust with the highest-­ ranking authority to which they are subject. Survey results are in line with the literature on Chile’s public administration. Joignant argues that between 1990 and 2010 three types of actors dominated the political parties’ hierarchies: technocrats, technopols, and party leaders. According to the author, there are two variants of technocrats: “the pragmatic, politically independent technocrat, who could eventually be part of any government, be it left or right, and the political technocrat as understood by [Merilee] Grindle or [Roderic] Ai Camp, that is, individuals in whom technical and political skills converge” (Joignant 2011; all translations the authors’). Technopols are a particular group of agents, since they possess two kinds of capital: technical and political. Finally, party leaders present two kinds of political capital: “on the one hand, militant capital, in which a whole life predominates in the service of the party . . . and which gives birth to the party man. On the other hand, the oligarchic political capital, which is conducive to national positions of the parties and that leads to the figure of the professional politician” (Joignant 2011). It could be noted that these party

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leaders are those who are designated for political articulation, which would correspond to the party operators in the typology used in this study. After the return to democracy in 1990 there was a strong expansion of the role of technocrats in the four administrations of 1990–2010, especially the role played by economists. However, the presence of technocrats in the state apparatus is not a novel phenomenon in the political history of Chile, since “one of the main characteristics of technocrats has been their continuous presence in the state apparatus” (Silva 2010). The technocrat is a subject that manages to acquire great political influence due to her technical-­scientific training: “More than political power in itself, it would be political influence exercised over their bosses, giving advice on complex economic matters and in the field of public policies” (Silva 2010). In this same line, technocratic economists have been placing themselves in the highest positions of political responsibility, either through bureaucratic channels, political parties, or both (Montecinos and Markoff 2016). At the middle hierarchical level, the function associated with implementing public policies is perceived as highly relevant; in fact, seven out of ten respondents consider this task to be very important. These appointments are based on relations of both party and personal trust (table 3.3). This level comprises national and regional directors of different departments (Institute of Agricultural Development, Development Corporation, FOSIS [Solidarity and Social Investment Fund] and SERCOTEC [Technical Cooperation Service], etc.) that operate politically in accordance with the interests of the government program and are evenly divided between of programmatic technocrats and party professionals. At this level, it is also possible to find programmatic technocrats who have personal confidence and are not necessarily partisan (table 3.3). It often happens that in this type of bureaucratic clientelism, some members of congress try to influence the appointment of professionals they personally trust, preferably to occupy management positions in the regions they represent. These appointments are usually supported by the Ministry of the Interior, so, often, the person who holds the position is the candidate of the deputy or the senator. According to the results of the survey, the importance of party operators who participate in political articulation is much lower at this level (38.1 percent) than at the higher level (61.9 percent). Finally, at the lowers level of the hierarchy, the operation and logic of patronage is concentrated in rewarding militants and doing electoral politics. At this level, political clientelism can be fused with patronage (Barozet 2006).

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Consequently, this level is occupied mainly by political and electoral agents and those with a direct relation to the recruiting office of a political party of government. This, according to Ramos, Panizza, and Peters (2018), seeks to generate links with the electorate, which would translate into a greater number of activists, brokers, commissars, and party political operators incorporated into the governmental structure. These positions are mostly contrata or honorarios. They also fulfill administrative roles, but close to citizens and in the field, such as a person in charge of the Oficina de Información Reclamos y Sugerencias (OIRS, Office of Information, Claims, and Suggestions), among others. However, it must be reiterated that the scope of patronage appointments at these levels is much lower than at the top and intermediate levels.

FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE PATRONAGE As we argued in the introduction to this chapter, the level of institutionalization of party systems and the internal organizational structure of parties are important determinants of modalities of patronage. Over the past years, Chilean political parties have been in a state of flux; they have lost representativeness and citizens have lost trust in them. According to data from the polling organization Latinobarómetro, citizens’ confidence in political parties in Chile is at just 14 percent—­the lowest since the return to democracy (Corporación Latinobarómetro 2018). In addition, in the Chilean case, corruption has penetrated electoral campaigns, making competition among candidates unequal and corrupt. Some candidates raise campaign funds through means not permitted by current regulations, which gives them an unfair advantage. Thus, electoral competition is not always seen as a clean process and lack of transparency has damaged the credibility of elections (Corporación Latinobarómetro 2018). According to Luna and Rosenblat (2012), “Chilean political parties are currently in a situation of growing precariousness and institutional weakness. This is consistent with high levels of discontent and even ‘fatalism’ regarding the functioning of the system, at the level of political elites, as well as in anomic and poorly crystallized visions regarding different institutional reform scenarios.” In addition, the links they establish with citizens are more of a clientelist nature than based on a programmatic vision (Arriaga 2004, Barozet 2006). It has also been observed that the political parties use the state to guarantee their survival, functioning as an agency that makes it possible to obtain jobs for their supporters. In fact, the United Nations Development Program (2014) argues that Chilean political parties are important actors in the selection of personnel who occupy or compete for positions in

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most areas of representation and also in the selection of those who aspire to be part of the government at any hierarchical level. However, the lack of transparency within the parties, the weakness in the mechanisms of internal democracy, and the lack of openness for renewal have contributed to biasing the nomination process, damaging the quality of their representation. The weakening of political parties has led to the emergence of new actors that have an impact on appointments. Think tanks, civil society organizations, and business associations are an example of this phenomenon. This has led to the incorporation of new actors to the ruling elite, specifically from civil society: “The rise of these agents led to the weakening of other sectors that once nurtured the political elite; for example, intellectuals linked to public universities” (Delamaza 2011). Think tanks play an increasingly relevant role. The professionalization of Chilean politics has led to a situation in which “both public authorities and political parties elaborate their programs and make their decisions through the mediation of experts in different fields, most of the time alien to the traditional public apparatus” (Gárate 2012). Among the various political functions that these centers fulfill in Chile, these organizations usually provide programmatic technocrats with a high level of knowledge about the proposals they are promoting, a situation similar to that experienced by Peru as described by Muñoz and Baraybar in this volume. They are also often at the center of the so-­called parallel governments, where those who have lost the elections take refuge, hold a job, and generate political influence. It is to these centers that professional politicians are often recruited. The influence of economic and business groups in Chilean politics is not a new phenomenon (Arriagada 2004). Entrepreneurs are colonizing almost all decision-­making spaces within Chilean society. This concentration of power is achieved through different methods. Chilean businesses have a high concentration of economic power, as well as large and stable links with political parties to impose positions and ideas that favor them (Undurraga 2012). In this context, the power of appointment is based on nonpartisan trust. Respondents indicate that other organizations such as unions, NGOs, and think tanks do not have a direct influence on appointments, but they do have an indirect influence, as they provide groups of experts to governments (see table 3.4). In this sense, both NGOs and think tanks are organizations that facilitate the recruitment of professionals for administrations (Delamaza 2011; Gárate 2012). This fact opens us up to question whether political parties in Chile are losing the ability to provide technical cadres to governments

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Table 3.4. Role of other organizations (NGOs, think tanks, trade unions) in political appointments Percentage (Respondents who indicated that these organizations have influence on appointments) They do not have any influence

50

They make suggestions but do not have direct influence in the appointment

30

They have direct influence Total

20 100

in the face of organizations and institutions that are becoming more relevant in this area. Some answers from the interviewees corroborate this: “In our government there was a lot of influence from [study] centers and the business world. It was evident when the managers of many important companies and holding companies arrived.” (Claudio, political party member, pers. comm., June 2016) “I believe that they have influence in terms of the ability to incorporate professionals, young people, who have a public interest and who have participated in NGOs.” (Javier, academic, interview, December 2016) “No impact, the experience of having worked in a reputable institution is considered, but it has no impact. So while it does not [have an] impact institutionally, the experience of having worked with these groups is valued.” (Romina, political party member, pers. comm., May 2016) “They would not have a higher incidence; the study centers have something to do with it. It would have an impact on the training of these people, especially in multilateral organizations or at international levels. They are rather a marker of distinction for the appointee”(political party member, pers. comm., January 2016).

CONCLUSIONS There is no single type of patronage in Chile. Rather, modalities of patronage vary depending on the hierarchical level that is being studied. At the top level we find patronage associated with programmatic technocrats, party professionals, and party operators who can mobilize managerial resources, but also have the capacity for political articulation. At the middle level, pa-

Patronage in Chile

tronage is also associated with programmatic technocrats and party professionals. At the low level, patronage is associated with clients and party activists who mobilize electoral resources. In this context, the typology proposed by Ramos, Panizza, and Peters (2018) is applicable to the Chilean case. Political parties continue to be important in appointments—­but they have lost relevance since the return to democracy. Presidents played a key role in the appointments in the period we analyzed. Trust appears as an important criterion in appointments, especially at the top level. In this sense, we can affirm that patronage is mutating, since political parties are not the only actors that currently have the power to appoint—­parliamentarians and organizations such as NGOs and think tanks are beginning to have greater influence and relevance in such actions. Our data supports the diagnoses made by Juan Pablo Luna (2010) and the United Nations Development Program (2014): parliamentarians, NGOs, think tanks, and unions have started to compete in the area of ​​influence of political appointments. The SADP is perceived as an important improvement for the development of the civil service, but in its current state it still lacks maturity and consolidation, especially because the system comes under stress when there are changes in government. Research in the area should focus on whether the new law of SADP has managed to strengthen and improve it. The results of this research constitute a first approach to the elaboration of a typology of patronage in Chile, and although the information was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, these results are not conclusive but rather a starting point to understanding the reach and the forms presented by patronage at the different state levels in Chile. Patronage is a mutating phenomenon, dynamic over time (Ennser-­Jedenastik 2014). Our analysis in this chapter is a snapshot of a specific moment. It would be interesting for future researchers to investigate the mechanisms of patronage in local and regional governments and, more specifically, how they are connected to clientelism and corruption.

REFERENCES Abarzúa, Eduardo, and Rafael Blanco. 2014. “Los cambios que necesita el sistema de Alta Dirección Pública.” Observatorio Económico 81: 4–7. Arriagada, Genaro. 2004. Los empresarios y la política. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones Barozet, Emmanuelle. 2006. “Relecturas de la noción de clientelismo: una forma diversificada de intermediación política y social.” Revista Ecuador debate 69: 77–102.

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Emilio Moya Diaz and Victor Garrido Barozet, Emmanuelle, and Vicente Espinoza. 2019. “Patronazgo: cómo los políticos fidelizan a una parte de la clase media ofreciéndole empleo público.” Ciper Chile. October 9. https:/­/­ ciperchile.cl/­2 019/­10/­0 9/­patronazgo-­como-­los-­p oliticos-­f idelizan-­a-­una-­parte-­de-­l a -­clase-­media-­ofreciendole-­empleo-­publico/­. Corporación Latinobarómetro. 2018. Informe 2018. Santiago de Chile: Corporación Latinobarómetro. Dávila, Mireya, Alejandro Olivares Lavados, and Octavio Avendaño. 2013. “Los gabinetes de la concertación en Chile (1990–2010).” América Latina Hoy 64: 67–94. Delamaza, Gonzalo. 2011. “Elitismo democrático, líderes civiles y tecnopolítica en la reconfiguración de las élites políticas.” In Notables, tecnócratas y mandarines: elementos de sociología de las elites en Chile (1990–2010), edited by Alfredo Joignant Rondón and Pedro Güell, 77–108. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Diego Portales. Ennser-­Jedenastik, Laurenz. 2014. “The Politics of Patronage and Coalition: How Parties Allocate Managerial Positions in State-­O wned Enterprises.” Political Studies 62 (2): 398–417. Fraile, Amaya. 2018. “13 años de funcionamiento del Sistema de Alta Dirección Pública en Chile. Un modelo de gestión incompleto.” In Un estado para la ciudadanía: estudios para su modernización, edited by Isabel Aninat and Razmilic Slaven, 361–402. Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos. Funk, Robert. 2011. “El relato político del primer año del gobierno de Piñera.” Revista de Ciencia Política 49 (2): 151–59. Gallo, Nick, and David E. Lewis. 2012. “The Consequences of Presidential Patronage for Federal Agency Performance.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 22 (2): 219–43. Gárate, Manuel. 2012. La revolución capitalista de Chile (1973–2003). Santiago de Chile: Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Garretón, Manuel. 2000. La sociedad en que vivi(re)mos: introducción sociológica al cambio de siglo. Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. González-­Bustamante, Bastián, Alejandro Olivares, Pedro Abarca, and Esteban Molina. 2016. “Servicio civil en Chile, análisis de los directivos de primer nivel jerárquico (2003– 13).” Revista de Administração Pública 50 (1): 59–80. IADB (Inter-­American Development Bank). 2014. Serving Citizens: A Decade of Civil Service Reforms in Latin America (2004–13). Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. Joignant Rondón, Alfredo. 2011. “Tecnócratas, technopols y dirigentes de partido: tipos de agentes y especies de capital en las elites gubernamentales de la Concertación (1990– 2010).” In Notables, tecnócratas y mandarines: elementos de sociología de las elites en Chile (1990–2010), by Alfredo Joignant Rondón and Pedro Güell, 49–76. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Diego Portales.

Patronage in Chile Kenny, Paul. 2015. “The Origins of Patronage Politics: State Building, Centrifugalism, and Decolonization.” British Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 141–71. Kopecký, Petr, Peter Mair, and Maria Spirova. 2012. Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2010. “Segmented Party–Voter Linkages in Latin America: The Case of the UDI.” Journal of Latin American Studies 42 (2): 325–56. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2021. “Entrevista a Juan Pablo Luna.” Diario La Tercera, Santiago, May 29. https:/­/­w ww.latercera.com/­la-­tercera-­domingo/­noticia/­juan-­pablo-­luna-­si-­la-­convencion -­es-­c apturada-­por-­el-­sistema-­politico-­y-­sus-­logicas-­estamos-­perdidos/­BPPF6MBYRNC IHGAZJ3FXJVOQJU/­. Luna, Juan Pablo, and Fernando Rosenblat. 2012. “¿Notas para una autopsia? Los partidos políticos en el Chile actual.” In Democracia con partidos: informe para la reforma de los partidos políticos en Chile, edited by Francisco Javier Díaz and Lucas Sierra, 115–267. Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos-­Corporación de Estudios para Latinoamérica. Mainwaring, Scott. 2018. Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Montecinos, Verónica, and John Markoff. 2016. Economistas en las Américas: profesión, ideología y poder político. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Diego Portales. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2014. “Clients, Political Operators, and Counsellors: Party Systems, Officeholders and the Politics of Patronage in Latin America.” Working paper, Uruguayan Association of Political Science, Montevideo. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Rajevic, Enrique. 2018. “La crisis de la regulación del empleo público en Chile. Ideas para un nuevo modelo.” In Un estado para la ciudadanía: estudios para su modernización, edited by Isabel Aninat and Razmilic Slaven, 403–32. Santiago de Chile: Centro de Estudios Públicos. Sautu, Ruth. 2004. Catálogo de prácticas corruptas: corrupción, confianza y democracia. Buenos Aires: Lumiére. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2013. “Presidentes y partidos en América Latina: la excepcionalidad del peronismo en el contexto latinoamericano.” Politai: Revista de Ciencia Política 4 (7): 29–50. Schneider, Ben Ross. 2009. “Hierarchical Market Economies and Varieties of Capitalism in Latin America.” Journal of Latin American Studies 41 (3): 553–75. Silva, Patricio. 2010. En el nombre de la razón. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Diego Portales. Toro Maureira, Sergio. 2007. “Conducta legislativa ante las iniciativas del Ejecutivo: unidad de los bloques políticos en Chile.” Revista de Ciencia Política 27 (1): 23–41. Undurraga, Tomás. 2012. “Transformaciones sociales y fuentes de poder del empresariado chileno (1975–2010).” Ensayos de Economía 41:201–25.

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4 The Politicization of Professionalization The Attempt to Reform the Public Service Sector in Ecuador, 2007–2017

Cecilia Sandoval

A

fter decades of political instability and recurrent dictatorial governments, the transition to democracy in Ecuador—­between 1978 and 1979—­embodied the beginning of a democratic era. However, the expected democratic consolidation did not materialize. The absence of national parties and solid internal structures within the parties that did exist led to the weakening of the Ecuadorian party system (see Conaghan 1998, 239–82; Pachano 2002, 117–42).1 The overthrow of President Abdalá Bucaram in February 1997, after he had been in power for less than six months, marked the start of a new period of political turmoil,2 which persisted until the beginning of Rafael Correa’s first mandate in 2007. Moreover, the return to democracy was marked by corporatist and clientelist practices framed within the traditional concept of votes for “employments, goods and services” (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007, 2). Correa was sworn in as president of Ecuador on January 15, 2007. His electoral campaign focused on the fight against corruption, the promotion of social justice, and the implementation of a new model of economic development that included the professionalization of the civil service. In a short time, Correa managed to overcome recurrent destabilizing practices and strengthen his mandate through a new hyperpresidential constitution (Pachano and Freidenberg 2016, 37–75; Montúfar 2012; Polga-­Hecimovich 2020, 15–39; Sánchez and Polga-­Hecimovich 2019, 379–408). This contrib-

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uted to his more than ten-­year tenure in power, which ended the cycle of political instability initiated in 1997. My aim in this chapter is to study the politics of patronage appointments in the presidencies of Rafael Correa using the typology proposed by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019, 147–61). I argue that, in a break with his predecessors, Correa aimed to build up a strong developmental state. As part of this project, Correa and a group of his collaborators sought to professionalize the civil service by appointing thousands of qualified personnel who were required to combine allegiance to the government’s political project with professional skills. Professionalization and politicization are regarded as opposites in the literature on civil service. However, the distinctive feature of civil service reform under the so-called Citizens’ Revolution was that it combined professionalization and politicization, in different measures that varied across time. There is a lack of empirical research on patronage (as defined in this book) in Ecuador. While there are a number of works on traditional forms of clientelism (see Menéndez 1986; Ospina 2006; Sánchez 1999; Pachano 2000, 2002, 2008),3 the politics of patronage appointments in the central public administration have been partially addressed only by Grindle (2012) and more recently by Sandoval (2018a; 2018b; 2019), Jaramillo (2020, 347), Martínez Novo (2020, 158), and Mejía and Albornoz (2020, 243–44).4 Therefore, I intend this study to be a pioneering effort in the empirical analysis of patronage politics in this country.

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CIVIL SERVICE IN ECUADOR Since the founding of the Republic of Ecuador in 1830 up until the beginning of the twentieth century, successive governments did not show a substantial interest in the condition of the civil service. The perpetuation of traditional working practices in the public sector went, rather, counter to modernizing processes carried out in other American and European countries. Indeed, some of the main features that characterized the public administrations of the period can be traced back to the times in which Ecuador was still a Spanish colony. The transformation of the Ecuadorian public administration began with the Juliana revolution of 1925. Over this period the state assumed greater control over areas that had, up to that point, been considered outside the government’s scope. This increased the need for an institutionalized and specialized bureaucracy (Pérez 2008, 15–20). Since the mid-­twentieth century, successive Ecuadorian governments showed some interest in the regularization of the public service. The first Law

The Politicization of Professionalization

Figure 4.1 Latin America public administrations merit index (scale 0 to 100). Source: Iacoviello and Zuvanic (2005) of the Administrative Career—­later known as Law of Civil Service and Administrative Career—­was passed in 1952, yet it was never properly enforced. A second Law of the Administrative Career was approved by Congress in 1959 (Official Register No. 956/­1959) but also failed to become fully operational (Dávila 1986, 32). In 1964 the legal statute on the Civil Service and Administrative Career became the Law of Civil Service and Administrative Career, codified in 1978 (Official Register No. 574/­1978). In the 1970s military dictatorships marked an important period for the development of the public bureaucracy. Public service was strengthened and the public sector bureaucracy continued to increase until the end of the century, with sporadic falls in numbers due to job cuts and the payment of monetary incentives to public sector employees to leave the public sector (Dávila 1986, 42). In April 1985, the General Regulation of the Civil Service and Administrative Careers was published, and in February 1986 the General Regulation of Public Servants’ Remunerations was enacted. These laws ran alongside consecutive reforms and changes until 2003, when the national congress passed the Civil Service Law and Administrative Career and Unification and Standardization of Public Sector Pay act. However, this did not imply a substantial quest for professionalization. The index of merit elaborated by Zuvanic and Iacoviello (2010) in a study of the professionalization of civil service in eighteen Latin American countries, carried out in 2005, shows that there was almost no in-

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stitutionalization of meritocracy before the Correa administration.5 In this regard, Grindle (2012, 148) argues that while legislation and regulations on the civil service had existed in Ecuador for decades, professionalization was not successful: “Twelve thousand employees joined the government in 1983; only three hundred of them had taken the required examination; only 10 percent of overall public sector workers had tenure.”

PROFESSIONALIZATION AND POLITICIZATION IN THE CIVIL SERVICE UNDER THE CITIZENS’ REVOLUTION After winning the Ecuadorian presidential election in November 2006, Rafael Correa began his first administration in January 2007.6 An economist trained in the United States and Europe, Correa adhered to the so-­called twenty-­first-­century socialism, a model of economic development originally promoted by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez that was characterized by an active role of the state in economic development. When Correa appointed his first ministerial cabinet, he placed old right-­w ing friends from Guayaquil (his hometown) alongside academics and left-­w ing campaign comrades into strategic government positions.7 The combination of appointments based on personal trust and ideological affinities provoked internal struggles from the start, creating factions within the government. This affected the quality of the executive branch’s management of public affairs, which was meant to base its policy initiatives on the principles of the “Five Axes of the Citizens’ Revolution,” a sociopolitical manifesto drafted during the 2006 presidential campaign from which the “National Plan for Well-­Being”—­a development plan intended to be “a professional, technical, and innovative manual for the design and implementation of public policies in Ecuador”—­took its guidelines (Alianza PAIS 2006, 19; SENPLADES 2007, 8). The approval by referendum in April 2007 of a call to set up a constituent assembly tasked with drawing up a new constitution (which had been one of Correa’s main electoral campaign proposals) placed Correa and his political party, Alianza PAIS, in a rush to fill up ballot lists to participate in the forthcoming elections for the constituent assembly.8 The party’s electoral candidates’ recruitment drive marked the first wave of traditional political co-­optation by the Correa government, evidenced by the selection of an important number of catchall candidates.9 Old and new political actors from different political groups joined the ruling party; some of them succeeded in establishing their political roots in Alianza PAIS strongholds, generating new local factions and new struggles for power (Lalander 2010; Pagliarone 2015; Alianza PAIS assemblyman and former provincial director of the party, in-

The Politicization of Professionalization

terview, January 23 and 24, 2014). In September 2007 a coalition headed by Alianza PAIS won the elections, obtaining 80 out of 130 seats in the constituent assembly. In September 2008 the new constitution was approved with 63.9 percent of the total vote. In subsequent elections for the national assembly held in April 2009, Alianza PAIS gained the largest share of seats, 59 out of 124. However, the party did not achieve a legislative majority that would have guaranteed the approval of Correa’s legislative initiatives; in addition, divisions within the internal factions began to deepen (Muñoz 2014, 211, 236).10 In a new legislative election held in February 2013, Alianza PAIS managed to win 100 out of 137 seats, ensuring Correa’s party full control of the national assembly.11 Presidential elections were held in Ecuador in parallel to legislative elections. In 2009 Correa managed to be reelected in the first round with 51.93 percent of the vote, while in 2013 he was reelected for a third term with 57.17 percent of the ballots.12 In this way, Correa became the Ecuadorian president who remained in power continuously for the longest period of time.13 With the government of the Citizens’ Revolution that took office in 2007, Ecuador experienced a series of changes that included an attempt to carry out an integral reform of the state apparatus. As part of this project, SENPLADES, the national secretariat for planning and development, published in 2008 a plan for the reform of the state (SENPLADES 2008).14 Following the publication of the plan, the national assembly approved the new Ley Orgánica de Servicio Público (LOSEP) in August 2010. This new act established that “The public service and the administrative career are aimed at promoting the professional, technical, and personal development of public servants, [and] to achieve the permanent improvement, efficiency, effectiveness, quality and productivity of the state and its institutions through the formation, operation and development of a human talent management system based on equality of rights, opportunities, and nondiscrimination” (translation mine).15 In its Article 65, LOSEP establishes that entry to public positions must be granted through meritocratic selection processes. Article 17 establishes different categories of appointments: appointments may be permanent (to be selected through merit contests), provisional, discretional, or for a fixed period. Article 58 stipulates that the hiring of occasional personnel may not exceed 20 percent of the total workforce of the contracting entity; it is necessary to request authorization from the Ministry of Labor for this percentage to be exceeded. However, newly created institutions were exempted from this rule until merit contests could be held. The law indicates that by their nature, these types of contracts do not generate job stability.16 Article 58 was

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Cecilia Sandoval

meant to regulate occasional service contracts. It mandated that ordinary, nontenured contracts last for twelve months and could be renewed for up to an additional twenty-­four months only. After that, the existing contract must be terminated, and the vacant position should be covered by a new appointee. Its abuse in practice led to a high turnover of public servants that affected forward planning and facilitated the practice of making appointments as payment for political favors, since the positions would become “available” again after a period of between twelve and twenty-­four months. Although LOSEP dedicates an entire chapter to matters of education and training, the law did not lead to substantial changes in practice. Despite LOSEP mandating meritocratic recruitment processes for the selection of public officials, a significant number of officials I interviewed for this study stated that jobs were awarded to candidates close to Alianza PAIS.17 In many cases, appointees were officials who already worked in the ministries with provisional contracts, who were then granted tenure.18 As stated by a civil servant with a highly technical profile: “There are specific differences [compared to the previous regulations]. A comprehensive reform has been proposed, but due to political and cultural reasons, it has not been properly implemented” (interviewee 14, second interview, March 16, 2017).19 The creation of the Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia (INM, the National Meritocracy Institute) in April 2011 evidenced an attempt to professionalize the civil service. Its purpose was to make sure that a merit-­ based system would be applied by state entities for the recruitment of civil servants, one that would take into consideration factors such as education, experience, and technical skills (Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia n.d.). But the INM was criticized by groups within the government and by high-­level members of Alianza PAIS for its alleged “lack of flexibility” in the hiring process (interviewee 14). The institute was eventually absorbed by the Ministry of Labor on February 1, 2016, and became a department of that institution (Ministerio del Trabajo, República del Ecuador n.d.).20 Discretionary appointments to public positions existed long before the Citizens’ Revolution. However, beginning in 2007, there were significant changes in the profiles of the appointees. The first development plan, drafted in November 2006, included the goal of creating a modern state with “efficient, effective, and decentralized public management  .  .  . that strengthens democracy, contributing to a transparent management and, above all, reinforcing the national character of the state” (Alianza PAIS 2006, 6; translation mine). The reform of the state held an important place among the “twelve

The Politicization of Professionalization

major national human development targets and policy strategies” presented to the national congress in March 2007.21 Moreover, the Undersecretariat for Democratic Reform of the State and Programmatic Management was created by SENPLADES at the beginning of Correa’s government in concordance with the 2008 constitution, which assigned an important role to meritocracy and professionalization.22 In order to implement the objectives of the plan, the government hired a large number of young professionals, many of whom had little work experience and only theoretical knowledge of the planning and implementation of public policies but were open to supporting the policies and politics of the Citizens’ Revolution. The aim was to set up a technical bureaucracy populated by party professionals with partisan trust and technoprofessional competence (interviewee 14, first interview, March 11, 2017), as defined in the typology formulated in the introduction to this book. These professionals entered top-­and upper-­mid-­level hierarchical positions directly (de la Torre 2013, 10–11), under the assumption that they would be able to develop and execute public policies because of their academic knowledge. However, their permanence in office was conditional on their political-­ideological alignment with the government (interviewee 14). Evidence of this mix of professionalization and politicization can be seen in the weekly TV program Enlace Ciudadano (The citizens’ link), broadcast on June 11, 2016.23 On the previous day, Correa had held a meeting with 2,400 political authorities and public sector officials. In the broadcast, Correa explained that during the aforementioned convention he had encouraged attendees to create institutional and personal accounts on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, in order to refute “any lies” about his government. Correa said about the officials in attendance: These people are public sector officials, but appointed discretionally. I can replace them whenever I wish. They have not won any open competition; they do not have a tenured position, they can be removed at will. So . . . those who get out of line should watch out! Those who come to me and tell me that they are mere technocrats should watch out. No, comrades! This is a political project. We must raise consciousness among our people about the dangers, about the need to keep change happening. This is why every functionary of the government of the Citizens’ Revolution must be a technocrat—­a highly political technocrat at that, as well as a highly technically proficient politician! A politician in the good sense of the word: striving for the public good, while raising awareness among our citizens. (Tele Ciudadana 2016; translation mine)

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The balance between professionalization and politicization in patronage appointments reflected factional struggles within the Correa governments. The appointment of programmatic technocrats and party professionals (as described by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos 2019) in the first years of Correa’s administration was especially promoted by the so-­called academic wing of the government. This group accompanied Correa from the start of his political career and had significant participation in the 2007 constituent assembly and in the drafting of the new constitution and national development plan.24 They were also supported by Ruptura 25, a political collective formed by young professionals who defined themselves as a political movement “of the modern and contemporary left” (Diario Expreso 2012). However, profound discrepancies arose between Correa and some members of this wing, who started to disagree with the overall project of the Citizens’ Revolution. Several members of the group were dismissed or resigned between 2008 and 2011, after which the group lost part of its power within the administration. A second faction within the government also had influence over the politics of appointment. This group acted as a “political wing” both within the government and the political party and was tasked with the recruitment of militants and the construction of a political movement from within the state; it concentrated its power of appointment mainly at lower-­middle and low hierarchical tiers. The political credentials of the group’s leader, Ricardo Patiño, were based on ties he developed during his youth with the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution. His vision of politics consisted in the recruitment of militants who should vow absolute loyalty to Correa and to the project of the Citizens’ Revolution.25 The relative influence of different factions in the politics of patronage appointments must be considered within the context of how governance was exercised under Correa’s rule. After an extended period in which economic issues dominated policymaking, the Correa administration placed politics “over any economic consideration,” turning politics “into a governmental technique over the priorities and urgencies of the economy” (Dávalos 2012, 1).26 Public policy was designed to grant greater powers to an administration that combined a development project with a political project. Governance was exerted from the top, by the leader (Correa) and a close group of technical advisors: they designed policies and made the decisions (Cordero 2016, 24). Within this model of governance, each faction fulfilled a specific role and colonized certain areas of the public administration. The academic wing had its stronghold within SENPLADES and was responsible for the design and implementation of public policies. The political faction was entrenched in the

The Politicization of Professionalization

newly created Secretariat of Politics, in the social affairs ministries, and—­an atypical finding—­in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.27 Among other tasks, this group had the mission of consolidating political and ideological cadres among public servants within the state portfolios where they exerted greater influence. Beginning in 2009 the “political wing” was also tasked with setting up the Citizens’ Revolution Committees (CRC), similar to the ones set up by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (Herrera Llive 2017, 96–109).28 Attempts at professionalizing the public administration conflicted with the goal of building a party within the state and the requirements of a hyperpresidential style of government. The consolidation of a network of patronage that occupied political quotas within the public sector led to political practices that permeated the public administration, particularly in sectors led by the political ministers that belonged to Alianza PAIS political bureau. These ministries and secretariats were converted into “political-­strategic entities” by integrating the political movement into the state apparatus and by relying on state resources for its expansion (Altman 2008; Katz and Mair 2009). In short, taking into consideration the changes made by the Correísta administration up until 2011—­such as the promulgation of the LOSEP and the setting up of the Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia—­it is possible to argue that a group of Correa’s senior collaborators initially attempted to carry out a meritocratic reform of the civil service in line with the government’s developmentalist project. In accordance to this goal, appointees were expected to combine technical skills with support for the Citizens’ Revolution’s political project. However, the administration’s hyperpresidential model of governance and the political needs of Alianza PAIS led to the weakening of the reformist drive and to an increase of patronage practices that prioritized political over technical skills.

THE POLITICS OF PATRONAGE APPOINTMENTS UNDER CORREA In the empirical analysis that follows I aim at testing the hypotheses I advance in this chapter concerning the relations between professionalization and politicization during Correa’s administrations. The analysis follows the theoretical assumptions and typology of patronage roles formulated by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019, 147–61). Methodologically, I adopt the expert survey model employed by Meyer-­Sahling and Veen (2012, 422), Kopecký et al. (2016, 416–31), and Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis (2018, 59–98). In the survey, I sought to assess the depth and scope of patronage appointments, as well as to determine who held real power of appointment,

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the patron’s motivations for making appointments, and the type of trust (partisan or nonpartisan) on which the appointment was based. I conducted seventy-­five semistructured interviews across the central public administration between March 2017 and January 2018. Of these, fifty were with experts with wide-­ranging knowledge of Ecuador’s public administration and twenty-­ five with key informants with personal knowledge of five selected ministries.29 The five ministries I selected for the survey—­the Ministries of Finance, Social Development, Foreign Affairs, Public Health, and Agriculture—­can be considered representative of Ecuador’s central public administration, as they are assumed to represent different patterns of bureaucratic professionalization in accordance with the comparative literature (Peters 1988). The selection covers different fields of a generic public service model based on the assumption that parties appoint discretionally in different numbers and with different motivations in different administrative areas (Peters 1988; Scherlis 2013, 63–84). The administrative hierarchy was divided into top, middle, and low tiers. The interview protocol consisted of recorded, personal, face-­ to-­face interviews that combined closed, open-­ended, and multiple-­choice questions provided quantifiable responses as well as qualitative answers that contributed to a better interpretation of quantitative measurements. All the information was tabulated and systematized in data matrixes. A high percentage of respondents (77.3 percent) reported higher levels of politicization of the public administration in the Correa governments compared to previous administrations. Objectively measuring politicization, however, is not easy, as it involves a combination of formal and informal practices that may be difficult to identify (Helmke and Levitsky 2006). Given the difficulties of identifying reliable indicators of politicization, scholars have relied on proxies, such as increases in the number of public employees or in personnel spending. In the case of Ecuador, the number of public sector workers in the ministries under study remained roughly stable since Correa first assumed the presidency in 2007 up until he sought his first reelection in 2009. In contrast, in the 2009 electoral year there was a sharp increase in the number of public sector workers in four out of the five ministries subject to this study (see table 4.1). The increase in the number of employees in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was particularly remarkable, as this was the only ministry with a proper career structure before Correa assumed office. The only ministry in which there was no rise in the number of employees in the period under study was the finance ministry, an invariance that may be attributed to the technical nature of the ministry. However, a majority of officials interviewed within this

837

710

3577

1,607

32,218

38,949

Finance

Foreign Affairs

Agriculture

Social Inclusion

Public Health

Total

39,955

32,822

1,919

3,548

697

969

2007

41,712

34,472

1,898

3,664

700

978

2008

5,9347

47,039

6,151

4,385

1,133

639

2009

55,172

46,228

3,747

3,294

1,299

604

2010

58,799

48,703

4,347

3,700

1,576

473

2011

70,313

62,363

1,387

4,190

1,866

507

2012

81,781

65,227

9,908

4,688

1,412

546

2013

90,758

71,931

11,238

4,888

2,162

539

2014

94,448

74,694

11,463

5,598

2,160

533

2015

94,448

74,694

11,463

5,598

2,160

533

2016

Source: Created by the author using data from Observatorio de la Política Fiscal de Quito (2006–2009) and the Ministry of Finance of Ecuador (2010–2016).

2006

Ministry

Number of employees by year

Table 4.1. Evolution of the number of permanent and nonpermanent civil servants in the Central Administration of Ecuador (2006–2016)

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institution (73.3 percent) claimed that politicization in the ministry was high notwithstanding the stability in the number of employees and the ministry’s predominantly technical functions. Arguably, increases in the number of public sector personnel are not a reliable indicator of politicization, as the rise could result from different reasons, such as the expansion in the role of the state, which was indeed the case under Correa. However, a large percentage of interviewees claimed that the ministries in which the higher increase in the number of civil servants was recorded were also highly politicized and noted that political alignment with the Correa administration was “a requirement” for working in the ministries in question. Informants also reported high levels of job insecurity provoked by the large number of nontenured, fixed-­term contracts. As indicated by the comparative literature and confirmed by several interviewees in answering open questions, these types of appointments can be used for setting a politicized parallel administration (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018, 72). The scope of patronage appointments reached considerable depths within the administrative hierarchy of the Ecuadorian state (see table 4.2). Seventy-­ eight percent of interviewees considered that all or nearly all (range 80–100 percent) high-­level appointments in the ministries under study were discretional, and a further 17.3 percent considered that a majority (range 50–79 percent) were of a discretional nature. The corresponding figures for the middle tier of the administrative hierarchy were lower but still significant. Discretional appointments reached high levels even in ministries that were supposed to be technical entities, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (93.3 percent of perceptions in the top tier and 66.7 percent in the middle tier) and the Ministry of Finance (100 percent in the top tier and 33.3 percent in the middle tier). Perceptions about large numbers of patronage appointments registered a significant decrease at the lower hierarchal level in all ministries. Interviewees stated that appointments at this level were mostly based on the recommendation of friends or relatives of the appointees who were (or declared to be) either supporters of the ruling party or were already working in the ministry. Most appointees at the lower level did not express political alignments; however, they were required to participate in political demonstrations, which the majority agreed to for fear of losing their jobs. The survey was aimed at determining who held real power of appointment, as distinct from the legal power (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018, 72). More specifically, it was aimed at assessing the influences of the president and the ruling party in the process of appointment, as indicators of

20 40 0

A few (1%–20%) None (0%)

13.3

Some (21%–49%)

Many (50%–79%) 13.3 0

20

53.4

13.3

0

6.7 26.7

None (0%)

All–almost all (80%–100%)

0

13.3

A few (1%–20%)

6.6

26.7

13.3

33.4

Some (21%–49%)

Many (50%–79%)

66.7

0

0 33.3

None (0%)

All–almost all (80%–100%)

0

0

0

6.7

93.3

0

0

Many (50%–79%)

A few (1%–20%)

100

All–almost all (80%– 100%)

Foreign Affairs

Some (21%–49%)

Finance

Scope 60

26.7 0

33.3

33.3

6.7

0

20

0

60

20

0

0

6.7

33.3

33.3 0

20

20

26.7

0.0

6.7

13.3

46.7

33.3

0

0

13.3

13.3

73.4

Social Inclusion

Percentage by ministry Agriculture

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

Low

Middle

High

Level

Table 4.2. Scope of patronage by level

20 0

20

33.3

26.7

0

0

13.3

53.4

33.3

0

0

0

33.3

66.7

Public Health

26.7 0

22.6

30.7

20

1.3

8

9.3

44.1

37.3

0

0

4

17.3

78.7

Average

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Cecilia Sandoval

the personalist or party-­dominated nature of the government and—­more broadly—­of the political system. As shown in table 4.3, a majority (54.7 percent) of interviewees claimed that at the higher hierarchical level political appointments were made by officeholders. Just 18.6 percent of interviewees affirmed that the ruling party had power of appointment, while 26.7 percent considered that within this tier the appointments were indistinctly made by the party or by officeholders. Regarding Correa’s own power of appointment, almost half of interviewees (49.4 percent) considered that he made appointments on his own, while 41.3 percent stated that the president appointed in consultation with the party and a further 8 percent stated that he “sometimes” consulted the party. However, the nature of the consultation remains unclear and open to interpretation given Correa’s strong control of the party: when answering open-­ended questions, a majority of interviewees stated that even when Correa consulted the party, the decision was ultimately his. A lower percentage of respondents (8 percent) considered that ministers made appointments in consultation with the party. A large group (40 percent) stated that these authorities had to consult the president before appointing, while 41.3 percent of the interviewees said that ministers made appointments without consultation. At the middle level of the hierarchy, the perception of the majority of respondents was that appointments were made either solely by the officeholder (54.7 percent) or after consulting their immediate superior (29.3 percent) and that the party had almost no influence in their decisions (10.7 percent). Experts pointed out that the officeholders’ higher degree of autonomy at mid-­ level may have been because many positions at this level required technical skills and were less politically relevant. However, a high percentage of interviewees (66.7 percent) stated that once in their posts, appointees were pressured to support the political project of President Correa. Parties other than Alianza PAIS had limited or no power of appointment, according to survey results. The control exerted by the ruling party over the legislative branch made negotiations with the opposition to pass legislation unnecessary. However, some parties joined the Correa administration at different times between 2007 and 2017. During that period Alianza PAIS made electoral pacts with a number of small parties and local political groups, such as Movimiento MAR, Centro Democrático, and Unidad Primero, but these organizations were rewarded with quotas for political positions such as governors and local mayors rather than with appointments in the central public administration. Politicians and political parties are not the only actors that may have

40

66.7

Officeholder

0

Director without consultation

More than one option

33.3 46.7

Director in consultation with superior

86.6

20

Director in consultation with party

Coordinator without consultation

0

More than one option

6.7

60

Minister without consultation

Coordinator in consultation with superior

13.3

20

0

20

Minister in consultation with party

Minister in consultation with president

6.7

0

None

More than one option

0

More than one option

Coordinator in consultation with party

26.7

73.3

President without consultation

13.33

13.3

53.3

20

46.7

13.3

20

33.3

40

6.7

0

6.7

60

33.3

6.7 26.7

More than one option

President in consultation with party

13.3 46.7

26.6

Political party

Foreign Affairs

Finance

Who appoints

13.3

60

20

6.7

13.3

33.3

46.7

6.7

6.7

46.6

40

6.7

0

6.7

40

53.3

46.7

40

13.3

0

60

26.7

13.3

6.7

40

33.3

20

13.3

33.3

53.3

0

6.7

20

46.7

26.6

33.3

53.4

13.3

Social Inclusion

Percentage by ministry Agriculture

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

Middle

High

Level

Table 4.3. Who has power of appointment

0

53.3

40

6.7

0

66.6

26.7

6.7

13.3

33.3

46.7

6.7

0

6.7

26.7

66.6

6.7

66.7

26.6

Public Health

5.3

54.7

29.3

10.7

6.7

42.7

37.3

13.3

10.7

41.3

40

8

1.3

8

49.4

41.3

26.7

54.7

18.6

Average

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power of appointment. It is not unusual in many political systems for social actors, such as business associations and trade unions, to nominate candidates for positions in the public administration, even if candidates are formally appointed by political officeholders. In the case of Ecuador, the power of appointment of social organizations was related to the organizations’ social and economic power, and it varied according to the ministries (see table 4.4). In some ministries, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, producers’ associations like the agroindustrial federations and the ranchers’ associations retained their traditional power to nominate candidates at vice-­ministerial and undersecretary levels. Respondents mentioned pharmaceutical laboratories, the Federación Médica Ecuatoriana, the Federación Ecuatoriana de Enfermeras, and a medical workers’ association (OSUNTRAMSA) as the organizations that previously had influence over appointments in the Ministry of Public Health; however, their influence was perceived to have weakened and practically disappeared during the Correa administrations. In contrast, some less-­t raditional social actors gained power of appointment. The government’s policies of social inclusion made it possible for social organizations that represented discriminated and minority groups to have representatives appointed to positions within the public administration. For example, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appointees were traditionally selected from members of the upper classes. However, under the Correa administrations the ministry included political quotas for the appointment of indigenous people and afrodescendants. Similarly, the Ministry of Social Inclusion opened political quotas for guilds of afro-­Ecuadorians, indigenous women, LBGTI groups, students’ associations, and workers’ associations. Understanding the motivations of political actors when making appointments is crucial for knowing the roles performed by appointees and the skills (professional or political) required for performing their roles. Scholars have identified two main motivations for patronage appointments: to control the public administration and to reward militants for their political activism (Kopecký et al. 2016, 423). However, as noted in the introduction to this book, these categories are too broad to describe the patron’s motivations. To have a more fine-­g rained understanding of the patrons’ motivations, the survey for this study includes three further motivations in line with the classification of roles presented in the introduction to this book: (1) to contribute to the design and implementation of policies; (2) to articulate political relations between the officeholder, the ruling party, and congress; and (3) to engage in electoral politics. As officeholders may appoint people to the public

Associations of Ecuadorian migrants who returned to Ecuador

“Escuela de Cuba”

“Escuela de Venezuela”

Social minorities linked with Rafael Correa– Alianza PAIS

Movimiento PODEMOS—Spain

Foreign Affairs Associations of Ecuadorian emigrants living abroad

Chemical products sector

Fishing sector, tuna producers

Rural/Indigenous associations

Ranchers associations

LGBTI movements

Teachers associations

Social and Women movements

Rural cooperatives / Fruit producers cooperatives

Youth associations / Students Federation of Ecuador Workers associations

Fruit producers associations Agroindustrial federations

Social Inclusion Afro-descendants associations

Agriculture Grain producers associations

Chemical products sector*

Pharmaceutical laboratories*

OSUNTRAMSA (trade union)*

Nurses Federation*

Medical Federation*

Public Health Council of Disabilities

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

Note: In the Ministry of Health, the organizations labeled with an asterisk were mentioned as those that previously had influence over discretional appointments.

Finance Workers associations (possibly, within the ministry)

Table 4.4. Agents external to the state with power of appointment (private, economic, social, others)

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sector for a combination of motivations, the categories are not mutually exclusive, and appointees may perform more than one role. Survey results evidence that patrons prioritized different motivations for making appointments, as well as variations within ministries (see table 4.5). Design and implementation of policy was the main motivation at the highest levels of the administrative hierarchy except for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Respondents also assigned high scores to control, rewarding militancy, and political articulation as motivations. As mentioned above, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs displayed a different pattern, as two-­thirds of the interviewees claimed that policy design and implementation was relatively unimportant for appointments at the top level. Instead, control (71.1 percent), political articulation (66.7 percent), and electoral politics (60 percent) were assigned high preferences by a majority of respondents. While the findings may appear atypical in a traditionally “technical” ministry, it was in line with other indicators that positioned this ministry as the most politicized of the sample. Policy design and implementation was also the main motivation mentioned by a majority of respondents (53.3 percent) for appointments at medium hierarchical level, followed by control (44.5 percent), rewarding militancy (41.5 percent), electoral politics (32 percent), and political articulation (26.7 percent). The roles performed by appointees could change over time and so could the skills required to perform them. Interviewee 14, a civil servant with a high technical profile working in the finance ministry, claimed that some professionals who were originally appointed because of their technical skills subsequently aligned themselves politically with the government and performed a more open political role, which led to their appointment to higher positions within the ministry. At the lower hierarchical levels, none of the above motivations was regarded as highly relevant by a significant number of respondents. The dominant perception was that appointees at this level were expected to support both the ruling party and the government in their political activities, which could be construed as electoral politics. However, as noted above, a number of respondents said that appointees at this level were not necessarily supporters of Alianza PAIS. The broad category of “control” was mentioned by a significant number of respondents as relevant at the high and intermediate levels of the administrative hierarchy (69.6 percent and 44.5 percent, respectively). The importance of control may be attributed to the fact that Alianza PAIS was a newly formed political organization that faced strong opposition from the traditional polit-

— 13.3 — 13.3 — 20

Reward militancy

Electoral politics

Control

Political articulation

Reward militancy

Electoral politics

—

Control 13.3

40

Political articulation

60

13.3

Electoral politics

Design/ implement policy

66.7

51.1

20

17.8

46.7

57.8

60

55.6

40

55.6

—

66.7

71.1

33.3

20

—

Control

Reward militancy

66.7

Design/ implement policy

Foreign Affairs

Political articulation

Finance

Reasons for appointment

33.3

22.2

13.3

22.2

46.7

31.1

40

37.8

60

46.7

46.7

73.3

68.9

80

Agriculture

20

—

0

—

20

—

0

—

66.7

26.7

—

20

—

86.7

Social Inclusion

Percentage by ministry

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

Low

Middle

High

Level

Table 4.5. Reasons for appointment

40

31.1

6.7

26.7

33.3

35.6

20

40

60

73.3

57.8

60

68.9

60

Public Health

36

34.8

10.7

22.2

32

41.5

26.7

44.5

53.3

44

53.4

48

69.6

65.3

Average

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ical parties that had historically controlled Ecuadorian politics. Facing this situation, Correa may have considered that his government needed to build a strong structure of commissars (as defined in the typology) to control the public sector bureaucracy in order to secure the implementation of the government’s program and the civil servants’ alignment to his political project. Political articulation, a role that in the typology of this book is performed by party operators and political agents, was mentioned as a relevant motivation at the top level of the administration by a majority of respondents in the ministries of foreign affairs, agriculture, and public health, and at intermediate level in foreign affairs. These roles are particularly relevant in presidential systems in which the president has low or moderate powers and is forced to negotiate with the legislative branch and with minority parties (Halligan 2003, 98–108). This, however, was not the case in Ecuador, in which, after the entry into force of the 2008 constitution, Correa enjoyed strong presidential powers and his party, Alianza PAIS, controlled the national assembly after the 2013 election. Instead, the appointment of party operators can be attributed to a combination of reasons. These included the government’s goal of building a strong party within the state and the president’s strategy of imposing his authority within the state apparatus. Operators may also have been necessary as intermediaries between the ministries, the national assembly, and interest groups in the absence of an autonomous body of political cadres that could perform the role outside the state. Rewarding militancy showed an atypical pattern during the administrations of the Citizens’ Revolution. Typically, reward is considered a modality of patronage characteristic of the lower levels of the public administration closely associated to clientelist exchanges (“jobs for votes”). Yet, according to survey results, rewarding militancy was regarded as a relevant motivation by a larger proportion of respondents at the highest hierarchical level than at the intermediate and lower ones. However, the importance of reward at the higher levels of the administration is in line with the strategy of party building of the governments of the Citizens’ Revolution. Replying to open questions, interviewees claimed that people were rewarded with political appointments at the highest level because of their militancy or their financial contributions to the campaign. The relatively lower importance of reward at the intermediate level compared to the higher one could reflect the importance attributed to technoprofessional skills at this level, in line with the characterization of the public administration as both professional and politicized. Meanwhile, as noted above, appointments at the lowest level of the public administration were made based on personal relations rather than political links.

The Politicization of Professionalization

Table 4.6. Nature of trust Percentage by ministry Level High Middle Low

Foreign Social Public Average Agriculture Affairs Inclusion Health

Nature of Trust

Finance

Personal

84.4

93.3

86.7

80

93.3

87.5

Partisan

57.8

82.2

82.2

75.6

71.1

73.8

Personal

73.3

82.2

75.6

80

88.9

80

Partisan

46.7

80

55.6

60

60

60.5

Personal

46.7

66.7

57.8

68.9

62.2

60.5

Partisan

31.1

57.8

40

44.4

40

42.7

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

As noted in the introduction to this book, trust is the essence of patronage. It can be of a partisan or nonpartisan nature, the latter covering relations of trust of a personal nature and with a social organization rather than with a political party. Survey results show that the highest percentage of respondents considered that “personal trust” was the main type of trust at the top (87.6 percent) and middle levels (80 percent) of the administration in all the ministries covered by the survey, compared with the importance assigned to “partisan trust” (73.8 percent and 60.5 percent respectively; see table 4.6). Regarding the lower level of the administrative hierarchy, personal trust was also mentioned by the highest number of respondents (60.5 percent), which confirms that public servants at this level were not closely linked to Alianza PAIS even though they were expected to engage in political activities in support of the ruling party. The high percentage of appointments made on the basis of personal trust is in line with a newly created party that had relatively few organic cadres and was being built from within the state. Yet, the dynamics between personal and partisan trust also need to take into account variations across time that may not be fully captured by the survey. It could be that as Alianza PAIS consolidated its party structure within the state, relations that were originally based on personal trust become more partisan in nature. However, internal party dynamics may also point in the opposite direction. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, during Correa’s first administration the government had a commitment to political change and to a reform of the economic development model that required appointees to be politically aligned to the government’s project. However, by his third term in office (2013–2017) the Correa administration had already lost its reforming zeal. The government became domi-

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nated by business interests mainly associated with the Group of Guayaquil (described at the beginning of this chapter) and particularly to Jorge Glas, who was sworn in as vice-­president of Ecuador in 2013 (Muñoz 2014, 342). Within this changing context, personal loyalty to officeholders became more relevant than loyalty to the party even if appointees still maintained a façade of ideological commitment. Concerning the typology of patronage roles used in this book, evidence from the survey shows that technical expertise combined with either personal or partisan trust was the main motivation for patronage appointments at the top and intermediate levels of the administration. The motivation fits the left quadrant of the typology that privileges technical skills leading to the appointment of party professionals and programmatic technocrats. There is, however, a caveat to be made. As noted by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019, 149–50), an appointee can perform different roles on behalf of her patron. Thus, as suggested above, an appointee can be expected to combine technical ability with political capacity, or personal trust with technical abilities. To test this proposition, table 4.7 provides the interviewees’ perceptions about the skills that can be required from a party professional appointee. Rather surprisingly for what can be assumed to be a role requiring exclusively technical skills, in four out of the five ministries covered by the survey, respondents also rated highly the ability for political articulation and the ability to reach voters in the field. These perceptions suggest that appointees may have been a hybrid of party professionals and apparatchiks, as party professionals were required to become political operators and engage in electoral activities, as demanded by the executive branch.30 Party professionals were duty-­bound to defend the government’s achievements and expected to engage in political activities on its behalf. This dual role may account for the turnover of party professionals and programmatic technocrats into party operators and commissars, particularly when they became organically linked to the ruling party. The high level of politicization of the public administration was also evidenced by the large number of apparatchiks performing a variety of roles such as political operators, commissars, and brokers. There is less evidence of the appointment of political agents at the top and intermediate levels of the public administration due to the centralized power exercised by Correa during his presidencies, as demands of loyalty to his political project left little room for personal loyalty to other political actors. Last but not least, public servants at the lowest levels of public administration were not particularly linked to the ruling party but, as noted above, they were expected to partici-

The Politicization of Professionalization

Table 4.7. Skills required for party professionals Percentage by ministry Level

High

Middle

Low

Skill required

Foreign Affairs

Agriculture

Public Health

Average

Ability for political articulation

62.2

88.9

77.8

76.3

Ability to reach voters in the field

77.8

88.9

84.4

83.7

Ability for political articulation

71.1

66.7

60

65.9

Ability to reach voters in the field

73.3

77.8

62.2

71.1

Ability for political articulation

44.4

40

31.1

38.5

Ability to reach voters in the field

60.0

44.4

33.3

45.9

Source: Table created by the author using data collected by the author, 2017–2018.

pate in electoral activities on behalf of the government. Therefore, it was possible to recognize some presence of electoral agents at this level.

CONCLUSIONS Ecuador has historically been a country with an inchoate and fragmented party system (Mainwaring 2018; Burbano de Lara and Rowland 1998; Freidenberg and Alcántara 2001, 123–52; Pachano 2006, 100–131; Pachano 2007, 161–211). It has a weak state with civil service capacities below the already low Latin American average, strong clientelist traditions, and poor enforcement of appointment procedures. President Correa’s rule, which spanned for a decade between 2007 and 2017 and covered three presidential terms (2007–2009, 2009–2013, 2013–2017), sought to change some of these negative features, but he ended reinforcing the centralization of power in the presidency and failed to introduce radical reforms in the state and the public administration. Correa sought to legally and politically undermine the country’s traditional parties and set up a new dominant party, Alianza PAIS, and he largely succeeded. However, and despite having obtained the largest parliamentary majority ever achieved in Ecuador in the 2013 election, Alianza PAIS failed in building solid party structures and political cadres, becoming a marginal

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actor in Ecuadorian politics.31 It was a strongly personalistic party to the extent that, as stated by an expert I interviewed for this study, “Correa was the party.”32 The party’s main role was limited to winning legislative elections and ensuring approval of the government’s legislation in the national assembly without the required parliamentary debate and with no accountability. The party’s weakness granted Correa and some of his nearest political collaborators free rein in the top-­down, discretional management of the public administration (Saiegh 2010, 48). Correa came to office with an ambitious program of social, political, and economic change that included an increase in state capacities and civil service professionalization. These goals were particularly important during Correa’s first mandate, in which a reformist and pluralist faction of the government sought to promote practices of good governance that would prioritize technical capacities and professional skills in public sector appointments. However, these were combined with affinity with the government’s political project. The government passed a civil service career law, LOSEP, that promoted the professional training of civil servants and created the Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia to ensure the merit-­based selection and promotion of civil servants. However, these reforms largely failed to take root and ended up fostering discretionary and/­or temporary appointments, mainly because they clashed with Correa’s determination to establish a hyperpresidential regime that strived to control as many positions and governmental areas as possible, with the aim of constructing—­promptly and efficiently—­the political apparatus that would make Alianza PAIS a dominant party within the country’s political system. The country’s public administration paid a high political and financial price for this strategy of party building. The government increased the public sector bureaucracy at high financial costs, an increase that, as noted in this chapter, was particularly large in electoral years. The rules for public sector appointments that were meant to set up the basis for a professional civil service were undermined by the proliferation of temporary and fixed-­term appointments that resulted in high levels of personnel instability within the public sector. Temporary appointments undermined professionalization and promoted job insecurity within the civil service, which was then used to pressure public sector workers into supporting the government’s political project in order to keep their jobs. Finally, the findings of this chapter support some key explanations advanced in the introduction to this book regarding variations in patronage roles. The literature on public sector appointments tends to regard politici-

The Politicization of Professionalization

zation and professionalization as the two extremes of a continuum. Yet, as evidenced in this chapter, Ecuador’s public administration was politicized and professionalized at the same time. The appointees’ combination of professional and political roles during the administrations of President Rafael Correa supports the insight by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019, 147–61) that appointees perform a variety of roles on behalf of their patrons, as they describe in their typology. While some of the roles require political skills, others are more technical in nature. Furthermore, if appointees can fulfill several roles, they can also be expected to have multiple skills. Thus, an appointee can be asked to combine technical ability with political capacity and personal trust with technical abilities. A second question concerns the distinction between roles based on “nonpartisan” and “partisan” trust between patrons and appointees. As argued in the introduction to this book, to better map the roles of political appointees and the nature of trust involved in them, it is necessary to have a longitudinal picture of the political and institutional dynamics in which the relations between appointers and appointees took place in order to map how relations changed over time. The case of Ecuador shows that the picture should particularly consider strategies of party building and changes in the nature of the political project of the executive branch, even under the same president. In many cases the nature of trust changed over time: public sector workers who were originally appointed as programmatic technocrats because of their technical and professional skills became aligned with Alianza PAIS, thus shifting their roles from programmatic technocrats to that of party professionals. Regarding presidential powers, the hyperpresidentialist nature of Ecuador’s political system translated, as hypothesized, in the president’s central role in making patronage appointments. Moreover, the personalistic nature of the ruling party and the symbiotic relationship between President Correa and Alianza PAIS made the distinction between the party and the president difficult to sustain empirically. It must also be noted, however, that the centrality of the president in making patronage appointments did not mean that all appointments were made by Correa, as officeholders made most appointments lower down on the administrative ladder. Last but not least, also as hypothesized, the low bureaucratic capacity of the civil service in Ecuador together with the government’s lack of trust in the civil service sector led to the appointment of a large number of professionals for the design and implementation of public policy in what was an ambitious program of social and economic change. And, while the government introduced meritocratic principles for appointing civil servants, these principles

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were not enacted when they conflicted with the government’s political goals, confirming the prevalence of informal practices over formal rules characteristic, not just of Ecuador’s public sector historical practices but also of other countries of Latin America.

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Cecilia Sandoval Mainwaring, Scott. 2018. Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy Scully. 1995. Building Democratic Institutions. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Martínez Novo, Carmen. 2020. “Intellectuals, NGOs, and Social Movements under the Correa Regime: Collaborations and Estrangements.” In Assessing the Left Turn in Ecuador, edited by Francisco Sánchez and Simón Pachano, 137–62. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Mejía Acosta, Andrés, and Vicente Albornoz. 2020. “The Political Management of the Oil Bonanza during Correa’s Government.” In Assessing the Left Turn in Ecuador, edited by Francisco Sánchez and Simón Pachano, 231–55. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Menéndez Carrión, Amparo. 1986. La Conquista del Voto. Quito: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. Meyer-­Sahling, Jan-­Hinrik, and Tim Veen. 2012. “Governing the Post-­Communist State: Government Alternation and Senior Civil Service Politicisation in Central and Eastern Europe.” East European Politics 28 (1): 4–22. Ministerio del Trabajo, República del Ecuador. n.d. “Ministerio del Trabajo asume competencias del ex Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia.” Accessed October 28, 2017. http:/­/­ www.trabajo.gob.ec/­m inisterio-­d el-­t rabajo-­a sume-­c ompetencias-­d el-­e x-­i nstituto -­nacional-­de-­la-­meritocracia/­. Montúfar, César. 2012. La dictadura plebiscitaria: neoconstitucionalismo y contrucción de un nuevo régimen político. El Ecuador a inicios del Siglo XXI. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. Muñoz, Francisco. 2014. “Ámbito de la política.” In Balance crítico del gobierno de Rafael Correa, edited by Francisco Muñoz. Quito: Arcoiris Producción Gráfica. Ospina Peralta, Pablo. 2006. “La crisis del clientelismo en Ecuador.” Ecuador Debate: Elecciones 2006. Clientelismo y Política 69: 57–76. Pachano, Simón. 2000. “Representación, clientelismo y corporativismo en Ecuador.” In La crisis Ecuatoriana: sus bloqueos económicos, políticos y sociales, edited by María Fernanda Cañete, 131–57. Lima: Institut français d’études andines. Pachano, Simón. 2002. “Partidos políticos y clientelismo en Ecuador.” In “Dadme un balcón y el país es mío”: liderazgo político en América Latina, edited by Wilhelm Hofmeister, 117–42. Rio de Janeiro: Fundaçao Konrad Adenauer. Pachano, Simón. 2006. “Ecuador: The Provincialization of Representation.” In The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes, edited by Scott Mainwaring, Ana María Bejarano, and Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, 100–131. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pachano, Simón. 2007. “Partidos y sistema de partidos en el Ecuador.” In La Política por dentro: cambios y continuidades en las organizaciones políticas de los países andinos, edited by Rafael Roncagiolo and Carlos Meléndez, 161–211. Lima: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance–Asociación Civil Transparencia.

The Politicization of Professionalization Pachano, Simón. 2008. “El precio del poder: Izquierda, Democracia y Clientelismo en Ecuador.” Paper submitted to 2nd International Colloquium on Political Science: Governments of the Left in Ibero-­America in the 20th Century, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, October 20–22. Pachano, Simón, and Flavia Freidenberg. 2016. “Régimen político y forma de gobierno.” In El sistema político ecuatoriano, edited by Flavia Freidenberg and Simón Pachano, 37–75. Quito: FLACSO Ecuador. Pagliarone, María Florencia. 2015. “Dinámicas políticas locales en tiempos de nacionalización de la política. Un estudio de caso de la provincia de Manabí.” Master’s thesis, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO Ecuador). Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Panizza Francisco, Conrado Ramos Larraburu, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. “Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina’s and Uruguay’s Central Public Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Pérez, Efraín. 2008. Derecho Administrativo. Quito: Corporación de Estudios y Publicaciones. Peters, B. Guy. 1988. Comparing Public Bureaucracies: Problems of Theory and Method. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Polga-­Hecimovich, John. 2020. “Reshaping the State: The Unitary Executive Presidency of Rafael Correa.” In Assessing the Left Turn in Ecuador, edited by Francisco Sánchez and Simón Pachano, 15–39. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Ruffing-­Hilliard, Karen. 2001. “Merit Reform in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective.” In Handbook of Comparative and Development Public Administration, edited by Ali Farazmand, 679–91. New York: Marcel Dekker. Saiegh, Sebastian M. 2010. “Active Players or Rubber Stamps? An Evaluation of the Policymaking Role of Latin American Legislatures.” In How Democracy Works: Political Institutions, Actors and Arenas in Latin American Policymaking, edited by Carlos Scartascini, Ernesto Stein, and Mariano Tommasi, 47–76. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. Sánchez López, Francisco. 1999. “El mundo no está hecho para partidos: Elementos para el análisis de los partidos políticos en el Ecuador temprano.” Ecuador Debate: Opinión pública 46: 257–72. Sánchez López, Francisco, and John Polga-­Hecimovich. 2019. “The Tools of Institutional Change under Post-­neoliberalism: Rafael Correa’s Ecuador.” Journal of Latin American Studies 51 (2): 379–408. Sandoval, Cecilia. 2018a. “Patronazgo del siglo XXI: Las prácticas clientelares de la Revolución Ciudadana y su impacto en la gestión pública del Ecuador.” Paper presented at the workshop Patronage in Transition: The Politics of Patronage in Latin America, Escola Nacional de Administração Pública, Brasilia, March 5–6.

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Cecilia Sandoval Sandoval, Cecilia. 2018b. “Politización de la profesionalización: el intento de reforma del servicio público en el Ecuador.” Paper presented at the 56th International Congress of Americanists, July 15–20, Universidad de Salamanca. Sandoval, Cecilia. 2019. “The Politicization of Professionalization: The Attempt to Reform the Public Service Sector in Ecuador.” Paper presented at the workshop The Politics of Patronage Appointments in LatAm, London School of Economics, April 1–2. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2013. “The Contours of Party Patronage in Argentina.” Latin American Research Review 48 (3): 63–84. SENPLADES. 2007. Plan nacional de desarrollo 2007–2010. Planificación para la Revolución Ciudadana. Quito: SENPLADES. SENPLADES. 2008. Reforma democrática del estado. Rediseño de la función ejecutiva: De las carteras de estado y su modelo de gestión y organización territorial. Quito: SENPLADES. Tele Ciudadana. 2016. “Enlace Ciudadano 479 desde Calderón, Provincia de Pichincha 11/­ 06/­2016.” June 11, 2016. Accessed April 21, 2022. https:/­/­w ww.youtube.com/­watch?v =491msJ5vWVs. Zuvanic, Laura, and Mercedes Iacoviello. 2010. “La Burocracia en América Latina.” ICAP– Revista Centroamericana de Administración Pública 58–59:9–41.

5 Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018

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P

atronage has long been a feature of Mexican public administration institutions. Indeed, at least since the establishment of the so-­called regimen de la revolución (revolutionary regime) in the 1920s, the regular use of power that political actors have for discretionary appointments to nonelective positions in the public sector (whether legally or not; see Panizza, Peters, and Ramos 2019; Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018) became the main mechanism by which public officials entered and moved around within government (Grindle 1977; Méndez 1997; Arellano-­Gault 2008; Merino 2006b). Even after the transition to democracy and the creation of the country’s first merit-­based system in the early 2000s, discretionary appointments have remained fairly common in the federal public administration (Nieto and Pardo 2019; Méndez 2010, 2018; Merino 2013; Grindle 2012). Thus, patronage has been historically part and parcel of Mexico’s public sector recruitment, promotions, and firing processes. In this chapter we study patronage practices in the Mexican federal government. We focus particularly on the administration of president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018) in order to explore the main research topics of this volume: the scope of patronage in federal ministries, the way patronage operates, the motivations that political actors have for discretionary appointments of public servants, and the roles the latter play in the bureaucracy.

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Following the research strategy proposed by the editors of this volume, we conducted thirty-­six semistructured interviews with public officials from four ministries with a variety of policy portfolios. Our research provides two sets of findings. First, when looking at patronage practices in relation to the Mexican case as it has been traditionally portrayed, we found both continuities and changes. As could be expected, patronage remains widespread at least in the federal public administration, as officials prefer to work with people they can personally trust. Therefore, from secretaries of state to middle-­level officials and policy analysts, discretionary appointments are still fairly common, despite the merit-­based regulations established in the 2000s. However, we also found that some of the administrative dynamics that historically surrounded patronage have changed. For instance, both the governing party and the camarillas (groups of public servants linked to a political patron by personal trust) seem to have lost their central place in bureaucratic dynamics. Second, when placing the Mexican case into a broader perspective as intended in this book, we found that patronage practices are hard to fit into one box because they vary widely across ministries. While we found evidence of patronage being frequently used for appointing programmatic technocrats, in line with the country’s historical patterns (see Camp 1983; Morales 1994), political agents, party professionals, and apparatchiks, as defined by the typology in the introduction to this volume, seem to be much less in demand except in some positions.

PATRONAGE IN MEXICO (1920 s –1990 s ) The history of patronage in the Mexican public sector, as in any other country, has been strongly influenced by the way the country’s political system has evolved (Pardo 1995, 2005). After the revolution of 1910–1920, a new institutional framework was established to guarantee social stability. The so-­called party of the revolution—­first as the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, then the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana, and finally the Partido Revolucionario Institucional—­was created in the late 1920s in response to the crisis triggered by the murder of elected president Álvaro Obregón. This party centralized political power and provided a mechanism to ensure a more or less peaceful transfer of power within the political elite. However, because of its links with the revolutionary movement, it quickly became the only legitimate political party, thus undermining the pluralism and competitiveness required for implementing proper democratic processes. The growth of the party of the revolution had important consequences on both the political system and the federal bureaucracy. The party provided

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strong political support and resources to its presidential candidates every six years. Presidents would, in turn, become the informal party heads once in office. The lack of electoral competition ensured that congressional positions were controlled by the party, election after election. This gave the president leverage to extend his influence beyond the executive branch. More specifically, this meant he had broad powers for making discretionary appointments, but also for deciding upon the selection of future legislators, judges, and even state governors. The lack of political competition in the electoral arena transformed the federal public administration apparatus into the place where political struggles were fought and political influence was sought after (Arellano-­Gault 2008). Indeed, getting a government position became an almost essential starting point for developing a career in politics; since the 1940s, it was also the path to be followed in order to gain the presidential candidacy (Camp 1996). Patronage was thus a natural byproduct of the postrevolutionary political system (Grindle 2012). Incoming presidents would usually think about public positions as their “spoils” (botín), and they would act accordingly once in office (Merino 2006b). In the absence of civil service regulations, every six years hundreds of appointments were made throughout the federal government. Personal loyalty was a central value, well above institutional commitment or public service-­mindedness. Selection and dismissals were based, first of all, on political criteria, whether partisan or personal. Furthermore, given the relevance that public positions had for advancing political careers, several political groups, the camarillas, or equipos, were formed around important individuals with political prospects (Grindle 1977). The combination of personal loyalties and group dynamics meant that public resources (budget, personnel, contacts, information) could be used to pursue group objectives rather than institutional policies. Similarly, these groups could move around the federal bureaucracy after government changes or subject to new appointments received by their central figures. Loyalty to a group, rather than the person’s objective performance, was often considered to be the most important factor when assessing someone’s value (Merino 2006b). With time, the essential features of the Mexican “spoils system” (for example, party affiliation and the prevalence of personal loyalties over job qualifications) did change in some respects. For instance, at least since the 1950s, once the old generation of revolutionaries started to disappear from political life, university education and professional skills gained increased relevance among those pursuing political careers inside government (Camp 1983). This became even more important in the 1980s and 1990s, when

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several “technocrats” with postgraduate studies from European and American universities occupied top-­level positions government-­w ide, including the presidency (Morales 1994). Therefore, while camarillas continued to be glued together by personal loyalties, they were also composed of individuals with well-­developed technical skills, giving way to a “quasi-­spoils” system (Arellano-­Gault 2008). This was particularly the case in certain federal ministries, which required a significant level of technical policy expertise, such as in health, finance, or telecommunications. Furthermore, as time went by, the centrality of personal allegiance to the governing party diminished, and individual loyalties remained the essential factor in patronage dynamics (Grindle 1977, 2012; Merino 2006a, 2013).

DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND PATRONAGE (2000 –2012) The transition to democracy brought with it some important changes to the politicoadministrative system and thus to patronage practices. The arrival of a new governing party for the first time in 2000 (the Partido Acción Nacional, PAN) changed the political dynamics both among federal powers and within the executive branch. The new political reality triggered a more active and independent role by the legislature and the judiciary branches. The politicization of the federal administration remained high, but its role as the main place where political fights would happen diminished as electoral processes acquired their true relevance with the emergence of multiparty politics. Furthermore, several civil society actors started gaining relevance in public debates on several policy topics, such as freedom of information, poverty control, anticorruption, and civil service reform (Méndez and Dussauge-­ Laguna 2017). One of the most significant changes was the creation, in 2003, of the federal Servicio Profesional de Carrera (SPC), the first government-­w ide merit-­ based civil service system. The idea of establishing a civil service system had been around since the 1980s, but the lack of political interest, economic crises, and interministerial fights had prevented its implementation (Pardo 2009). While a few merit systems had been established in previous times, these were limited to specific agencies (for example, the diplomatic service or the electoral professional service; see Auditoría Superior de la Federación 2014). However, with the political alternation of 2000s the subject regained interest among different political groups. Indeed, members from both the governing party and the main opposition party at the time (the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) introduced their own civil service law initiatives in congress. President Vicente Fox (2000–2006) himself was interested in

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administrative reform topics, including the creation of a merit system. After several rounds of negotiation among political actors, with contributions from several academic and civil society experts, the SPC law was enacted in April 2003. Additional general regulations and detailed procedures for implementing human resources subsystems were published in 2004 (Méndez 2010; Dussauge-­Laguna 2011). The SPC introduced the principles of merit and equal opportunity in the federal public service, directly challenging the foundations of patronage dynamics. New regulations were drafted for personnel recruitment, selection, promotion, evaluation, training, and termination, as well as for the design and approval of positions and ministerial structures. Similarly, a variety of information tools started to be developed for implementing open competition exams, training courses, and the overall management of the system (Dussauge-­Laguna 2007). A new governance structure for operating the SPC was developed across federal agencies, under the central coordination of the newly revamped Secretaría de la Función Pública (Ministry of Public Administration, formerly the Ministry of the Controllership and Administrative Development). The latter was also in charge of developing human resources (HR) tools to be applied by all ministries and agencies. Lastly, the law established a three-­year framework to implement the system, to coincide with the end of the Fox administration in 2006 (Merino 2006a). In terms of coverage, the SPC initially seemed to be comprehensive, but ended up including only a very limited number of federal positions. The SPC included all federal ministries (except for the Ministries of Defense, Marine, and Foreign Affairs, which already had their own merit systems), and their “organismos desconcentrados” (ministerial arm’s-­length agencies). The SPC structure covered six positions at the core of the bureaucratic hierarchical structure: director general, deputy director general, director of area, deputy director of area, head of department, and policy analyst; the first two positions are usually considered top-­level, and the rest middle-­level ones. Secretary of state, undersecretary of state, head of unit (which exists only in some ministries), general administrator (oficiales mayores), and cabinet advisor positions all remained discretionary appointments in legal terms. Lower-­level positions (for example, assistants, chauffeurs, and street-­level bureaucrats) were also left out of the SPC. In the end, the SPC initially applied to only 77 out of 103 federal institutions (within the central administration), and to about 43,000 positions out of 273,000 in those public institutions included in the system (or out of 610,000 positions that formed the federal government’s central structure; see Merino 2013).

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The capacity of the new SPC to eradicate patronage from the Mexican public sector was thus limited because of its original design, but it was also further constrained by other problems (Nieto and Pardo 2019; Grindle 2012). The SPC, for instance, combined characteristics from position-­based systems and closed systems, which generated confusion among all actors involved (Méndez 2018; Dussauge-­Laguna 2005; Martínez 2006b). The design of HR subsystems was similarly complex and difficult to follow in practice (Pardo 2005). Federal agencies did not have the basic HR management infrastructure to cope with the new system and they were given a very short time (three years) for implementation. Overall, the introduction of the SPC was far from successful (Dussauge-­Laguna 2008, 2011). By the end of the Fox administration in 2006, the SPC had shown mixed results regarding its capacity to establish merit principles and reduce patronage in the federal government (Martínez 2006a; Méndez 2018). On the one hand, it had introduced the regular use of open-­competition procedures, something that did not exist before. Despite the limitations faced by recruitment and selection procedures (see below), for the first time both public officials and external applicants were able to learn about (and apply for) government vacancies. Similarly, the SPC brought with it a process of professionalization of HR management activities and procedures. Lastly, there is some evidence that the SPC sparked some cultural changes within the federal government that would develop in the following years. Career officials, for instance, started to identify themselves as members of a broader community of professionals (some even shifting away from personal loyalties), and increasingly preferred to be associated with subordinates and supervisors appointed through merit-­based channels (Arellano-­Gault 2013). On the other hand, there were many criticisms of the SPC, particularly with regards to the discretion exercised in open-­competition procedures. Several actors pointed out how supervisors illegally shared examinations with their preferred candidates, or how they rejected good candidates when their favorites did not make it to the final round of interviews (Méndez 2018). Many people similarly complained about the irregular use of Article 34 of the SPC law, which provided for noncompetitive temporary appointments in case of emergencies. Without proper justifications, managers often invoked Article 34 to appoint people they knew (Merino 2013), who would then have access to the information and training required to win the open competition when it eventually happened. In 2006 Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) became the second president from the PAN, Despite being members of the same party, Calderón and Fox

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were political rivals. This affected the political transition and it had significant consequences for both the SPC’s institutionalization and patronage dynamics. Indeed, during the government of Calderón, administrative reform discussions received only minor attention from the president, whose priorities were focused elsewhere. More importantly, the merit system was undermined on several fronts. From the very beginning of the administration, budgetary resources for its operation were reduced year after year (Nieto and Pardo 2019). In response to the various complaints that federal ministries had expressed against the Ministry of Public Administration’s centralization of HR decisions, a new set of SPC regulations was issued in 2007 (Pardo 2005). These regulations decentralized various procedures, including those related to recruitment and selection, and provided individual ministries a broader margin of maneuver for conducting hiring and firing processes (see OECD 2011). If during the Fox years the SPC had faced important limitations, during the Calderón administration the system was overtly ignored. Patronage thus regained some of its past relevance (Merino 2013; Nieto and Pardo 2019). Administrative actors set in motion a number of strategies to bypass merit-­ based regulation. The first one was to exclude newly created positions from the SPC’s structure. Similarly, a second strategy was to take an important number of positions out of the SPC’s structure, a measure facilitated by a norm introduced in 2010 that explained why a position could be considered an “unrestricted appointment” (libre designación). As a result of both of these measures, coupled with civil service cuts made after the 2008 financial crisis, the number of SPC positions went down to 35,000 (Vázquez 2017, 64). A third strategy that was widely used by ministries was declaring that no suitable candidates were found after concluding open-­competition procedures (concursos desiertos). This allowed them to appoint someone else until a new open competition was implemented. The frequency with which this trick was employed varied across time but reached up to a third of the selection processes in 2010 (Merino 2013; Méndez 2018). A fourth strategy was the increased use of Article 34 as a basis for appointing someone. Indeed, between 2007 and 2012, about seventeen thousand appointments in SPC positions followed this procedure (Vázquez 2017, 101). Last but not least, the Calderón administration asked for the resignation of several public officials from the previous government, including some in tenured SPC positions. While many of these strategies were mainly addressed toward the highest SPC positions (for example, director general and deputy director general), they affected all hierarchical levels.

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In sum, the creation of the first government-­w ide civil service system was undoubtedly one of the main contributions of Mexico’s democratic transition. For the first time in history, patronage was legally constrained by a set of merit-­based principles and procedures that applied to the core of the federal bureaucracy. HR management activities became professionalized and open-­ competition procedures quickly became the new normal. However, during the final years of the Fox administration and throughout the whole Calderón administration, patronage practices found their way back. Professionalization procedures were routinely applied but coexisted with personal loyalties and party affinities during the PAN area. Because of the new SPC rules, discretionary appointments became formally illegal in many areas of the federal government. Yet patronage retained its place as a key feature of Mexico’s public administration.

PATRONAGE DURING THE ADMINISTRATION OF ENRIQUE PEÑA-­NIETO (2012–2018) We now turn our attention to the analysis of patronage dynamics during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto. Before we present and discuss our empirical findings, we should provide some information about the way we conducted the study. Following the research methodology proposed by the editors, we focused on four federal ministries with different policy portfolios and institutional features. However, because of issues in trying to contact officials in the original set used by other authors (which included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Economy), we developed our interviews with officials from the Ministry of Finance (MoF; Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público), the Ministry of Tourism (MoT; Secretaría de Turismo), the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD; Secretaría de Desarrollo Social, currently Secretaría de Bienestar), and the Ministry of Urban and Territorial Development (MoUD; Secretaría de Desarrollo Territorial y Urbano). This gave us enough variation among ministries, as some of these are mainly focused on economic policy activities (MoF and MoT) while others focus on social policy activities (MoSD and MoUT). Similarly, one of the ministries performs highly technical activities (MoF), while others develop more clearly political roles as part of their missions (MoSD and MoUT). We also interviewed two officials from the Ministry of Health, but it was impossible to secure further interviews with health policy officials and we decided to drop this case. Lastly, we interviewed four subject-­matter experts (two senior public administration scholars, and two senior officials each with more than twenty-­five years of

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experience in the public sector). We do not include information obtained in these six interviews, but we did use it to better understand and interpret the answers obtained from officials in the four ministries included. We employed a convenience sample to reach at least eight interviewees per ministry. We first contacted officials we knew in each one of the ministries. Thereafter, we followed a snowball technique to secure further interviews. We asked our first points of contact to help us facilitate meetings with people with a range of personal characteristics (age, gender, professional experience, ministerial levels, policy areas) to get as much variation as possible. All interviewees were in senior or middle-­level positions, from director general to head of department, thus covering five out of six hierarchical levels of the SPC’s structure. About half of them were women (42 percent). About two-­ thirds (59 percent) had postgraduate studies (PhD or master’s degree). Almost all had an academic background in social and administrative sciences. Thirty-­two interviews were recorded and transcribed; four were not. Interviews took between thirty-­five and ninety minutes depending on how much detail interviewees wanted to provide in response to the open-­ended questions. Lastly, interviews were conducted throughout 2018 and 2019. The following graphs and quotes present information obtained in 36 interviews (MoF: 8; MoSD: 10; MoT: 9; MoUT: 9). We applied the same questionnaire used for the other country cases, aiming to explore how extensive patronage appointments are in the central administration, who is in charge of patronage appointments (and in which hierarchical levels), and what the motivations are behind patronage appointments. While our results are not representative statistically speaking, we do think they provide a good idea of how and why patronage works in the Mexican public sector. As mentioned, the interviews were focused on getting information about patronage dynamics during the administration of President Peña Nieto. This is relevant for at least two reasons. First, because while we have some studies about how patronage worked in previous governments, throughout the twentieth century and up to the PAN administrations of 2000–2012, there are no similar studies for the Peña Nieto administration. Second, the latter represents both the second political party alternation in the country’s history, and the return of the PRI to the federal government. It thus offers the opportunity to learn about how patronage patterns have changed (or not) once the old revolutionary party returned to government, but this time facing (at least formally) public sector appointment procedures under merit-­based civil service rules (for example, the SPC).

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The Scope of Patronage

The first thing we wanted to learn about was the extent to which patronage appointments take place in the federal (central) public administration. Figure 5.1 presents a summary of the responses in five sets, one for Mexico as a whole, and then one for each one of the ministries. This first figure also provides information disaggregated for each one of the three groups of hierarchical positions we asked about: top-­level officials (which include secretary of state, undersecretary of state, head of unit, director general, deputy director general), middle-­level officials (director of area, deputy director of area, head of department, and policy analyst), and low-­level officials (secretaries, unionized personnel, chauffeurs). There are at least two important findings that can be observed from these numbers. The first one is that patronage appointments are, indeed, quite common in the top and middle-­level positions. If we look at the aggregate of the Mexican case, in the top levels interviewees stated that about 90 percent of the appointments are discretionary (19.4 percent responded “many” and 69.4 percent said “all or almost all”). One interviewee said, for instance, “In my perception discretionary appointments are particularly present at the highest levels” (IMoF-­08).1 Another similarly expressed that “in the higher levels, most of the appointments are discretionary” (IMoT-­06). This is not really surprising given both the long tradition of patronage in Mexico and the fact that top-­level appointments include positions such as secretaries and undersecretaries of state, and heads of unit, all of which are, by law, political appointments. Figure 5.1 shows a similar situation for the scope of patronage appointments across middle-­level positions, even if not as extended. If we look at those interviewees who answered that discretionary appointments take place for “all/­almost all” middle-­level positions (13.9 percent), or for “a lot” of them (30.6 percent), we have a total of 44.5 percent. If we were to also add the perceptions of those who think “many” discretional appointments are made at this hierarchical level (25 percent), then one would have a scenario where patronage appointments seem to happen almost three-­quarters of the time (69.5 percent). Again, none of these results are fully surprising given the history of patronage in the Mexican federal government. The case of low-­level officials is slightly different from the previous ones. Here even if we add responses for “all/­almost all” (13.9 percent), “a lot” (5.6 percent), and “many” (11.1 percent), the total is just 30.6 percent. There are two explanations for this. First, interviewees did not consider these positions

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Figure 5.1 Scope of patronage appointments at different administrative levels in the federal government, percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts to be relevant for the dynamics of their ministries, as they see these as purely operational positions. But second, and more importantly, these positions have historically been under the control of public sector unions and their leaders (Pardo 2005). Therefore, other patterns of patronage appointment apply in these positions, which involve the role of family networks (in some public organizations positions are even “inherited”), corrupt exchanges (for example, selling positions or giving them away to union leaders’ spouses), and links to the governing party that tolerate these practices in exchange for political (for example, electoral) support. However, these patterns are not further explored here because they are not relevant for the discussion of patronage patterns as approached in this volume. The numbers in figure 5.1 also point to a second important finding: patronage dynamics, albeit widespread, vary considerably across ministries. For instance, if we look at the numbers for each ministry, in general there seems to be a very high number of discretionary appointments for top-­level positions. However, when we put together responses for “all/­almost all” and “a lot,” the number is lower for the Ministry of Finance (75 percent) than for the other three ministries: the Ministry for Social Development (90 percent), Ministry of Tourism (100 percent), and Ministry of Urban Development (88.9 percent). Similar differences occur when we look at middle-­level positions. In the MoF, responses expressing the existence of discretionary appointments in all/­almost all (12.5 percent) or a lot of instances (12.5 percent) together reached 25 percent; they jump up to 37.5 percent if we include responses for

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“many” (12.5 percent). Yet the image is not the same in the other ministries: in the MoSD responses for “a lot” were 20 percent (no responses for “all/­almost all”), but if we add “many” (60 percent) the total jumps up to 80 percent; in the MoT “all/­almost all” (11.1 percent) and “a lot” (33.3 percent) add up to 44.4 percent, but increase to 66.6 percent if we add “many”; and lastly, in the MoUD responses for “all/­almost all” (33 percent) and “a lot” (55.6 percent) add up to 88.9 percent. Why does the scope of patronage vary across ministries? One explanation would seem to be found in the nature (institutional mission and policy activities) of each ministry. Indeed, as mentioned above, some authors have previously suggested that ministries with a more “technical” profile are less prone to include discretionary appointments, particularly without taking into account the technical qualifications that potential appointees bring to the job. An official from the MoF, for instance, said: “This ministry is highly technical and therefore it is not unusual to see politicians and higher level officials passing by, while public servants stay for a longer time” (IMoF-­02). Several interviewees expressed similar opinions about how specific technical qualifications were usually required for positions in the MoF, as well as in other ministries considered to be more technical (for example, energy policy or telecommunications; IMoT-­05; IMoUD-­08). Other interviewees framed the idea in slightly different terms but with the same meaning: “In some ministries that have to deal with political issues, they tend to appoint someone with a political profile; in others that are more technical, not so much” (IMoT-­02). Indeed, another MoF official said, “When I was in the Ministry of Public Administration, appointments were even more discretionary than here” (IMoF-­ 04). Therefore, things do seem to vary across ministries and policy sectors. A slightly different take on why patronage varies across positions relates to the specific nature of the function to be performed. One interviewee put this very clearly: “I think if you are in some areas, such as contracting procedures, you need people you can trust. But if you are in other areas that are more technical, you need people that can help you to deliver results” (IMoSD-­01). Therefore, in some cases patronage may be conditioned by some kind of calculus carried out by the people making the appointment, who are willing to sacrifice their discretionary margin of maneuver for the sake of securing “results” in certain areas under their remit. In this same vein, one official stated, “I think some supervisors are fine with whoever wins [the open competition for the vacancy], as all they want is people who really know how to do the job” (IMoF-­05). Last but not least, an important variable that may explain why patronage

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varies across ministries, but also why despite its existence discretionary appointments are not fully extended, is the presence of the SPC recruitment procedures. Here our findings were somewhat mixed. Some people suggested that merit-­based examinations and job profiles were useless, but others said that they have known of several cases where rules had been followed and respected. On the first point of view, an interviewee said: “I have seen positions that are publicly open, but insiders know someone has been chosen already. Hence the SPC procedures are just a formality” (IMoSD-­10). Another one, from a different ministry, similarly said that SPC regulations “sometimes are more of a disguise, as immediate supervisors think ahead who should be hired [in a certain position], and then they follow the SPC formalities” (IMoF-­ 05). Another added that “many appointments go through Article 34 for some time, and then they become part of the SPC” (IMoF-­08). An even stronger statement was this: “People have always found a way to twist the SPC for their own intentions. Discretionary appointments are made, and appointees are afterwards somehow inserted into the SPC structure” (IMoUD-­08). Yet we also obtained a rather contrasting view from other officials. For instance, one said, “Middle-­level positions are subject to civil service rules; I have not seen discretionary appointments at that level” (IMoUD-­05). Another interviewee stated that “these are positions that require a certain job profile and passing certain examinations and tests” (IMoSD-­07). A more nuanced response, but still in the same vein, was the following: “I have seen positions where supervisors had personal preferences over certain candidates, but the winner was someone they did not expect” (IMoF-­01). Indeed, a number of interviewees expressed that, while the SPC was far from being a perfect meritocratic system, it had certainly made patronage more difficult (IMoT-­01). Who Uses Patronage and How?

The second thing we wanted to learn about is who actually uses patronage and how. The idea was to explore whether the president or the governing party controlled discretionary appointments but also to gather some insights about the potential influence of other actors. Figures 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 present responses about who makes the call for discretionary appointments, and whether they do so on their own or in consultation with the governing party or someone else. Figure 5.2 refers to the highest-­level political appointments (secretaries of state) made by the president. We thought it was interesting to include these positions to further test the role and influence the governing party may have in patronage. Figure 5.3 refers to top-­level appointments, in-

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cluding both political ones such as undersecretary of state/­head of unit, made by a secretary of state, and administrative ones such as director general, made by an undersecretary of state. While in these levels political and administrative positions are clearly separated in law, in practice appointment patterns blur the boundaries among them. Thus figure 5.4 presents senior administrative appointments, such as deputy director general, made by a director general, and middle-­level appointments (director of area, deputy director of area) made by a director general/­deputy director general. There are three main findings illustrated in figures 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4. The first one is that the governing party plays only a limited role in patronage dynamics in Mexico. Figure 5.2 shows that a small fraction (8.33 percent) of our interviewees thought the party had directly appointed some secretaries of state. Then, a significant number of interviewees (77.78 percent) considered that the president did consult with the party when making appointments at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy. In this vein, one interviewee said that “during the PRI government appointments were consulted with the party” (IMoT-­03). Another interviewee from the same ministry even said, “My perception is that the PRI directly appointed or nominated some people, for instance, the secretary and one of the undersecretaries” (IMoT-­05). An official from another ministry suggested that these higher officials “are backed by the party[;] there is some kind of quota” (IMoUD-­07). Lastly, figure 5.3 also shows that 8.33 percent of our interviewees considered that even secretaries and undersecretaries had to consult with the governing party when making discretionary appointments under their span of control. However, our second finding is that it is the president who seems to play a more important role when making discretionary appointments at top-­level political positions. Figure 5.2, for instance, shows that 13.89 percent of interviewees considered that the president himself appointed secretaries and undersecretaries of state without consultation with the party. Figure 5.3 shows that 61.11 percent of the secretaries and undersecretaries appoint their subordinates in consultation with their immediate superior (for example, the president or the secretary of state, respectively). While we cannot further disaggregate the latter data, additional comments from interviewees did point to the prominent role the president has in patronage dynamics at the higher political levels of government. One interviewee said that “in the highest levels, the secretary of state would always consult with the president” (IMoUD-­03). Another one said, “In my view, president Peña Nieto did not ask for permission or take into consideration the party [when making appointments]” (IMoSD-­06). An official from a different ministry also shared this view: “I

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Figure 5.3 Patronage appointments and party influence (top-­level political and administrative appointments by political appointees), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

Figure 5.2 Patronage appointments and party influence (top-­level political appointments by the president), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

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did not observe any influence from the party in the appointment process” (IMoF-­05). Finally, one interviewee said that “all appointments at the highest level are probably made in consultation with the president. The rest of appointments are made in consultation with immediate superiors” (IMoT-­01). In line with the latter point, our third finding is that patronage dynamics seem to change significantly in at least three ways as we go down the bureaucratic hierarchy. First, the relevance of both the governing party and the president as the appointing powers tends to diminish considerably. Indeed, figure 5.4 shows that none of our interviewees thought that appointments in top or middle-­level administrative positions were made in consultation with the governing party. Nor did they mention the president as an important appointing actor in these levels. Second, the appointer’s personal discretion seems limited by a process in which those making the appointment ask for the opinion of their immediate superiors. According to one official, “below undersecretaries, I think appointments are made in consultation with immediate superiors” (IMoW-­08). Another interviewee said that “it is certainly important to have the approval of your immediate superior even if fulfilling the required profile is the most important aspect” (IMoF-­06). In other words, patronage does not imply giving a free hand to the appointing official. As shown in figure 5.4, 62.46 percent of director generals and deputy director generals are said to have consulted with their immediate supervisors (which could be secretaries/­undersecretaries of state/­heads of unit, or director generals, respectively). The numbers are roughly similar for the MoF (71.43 percent), MoSD (70 percent), and MoT (66.67 percent), albeit considerably smaller for the MoUD (44.4 percent). It is also worth mentioning that discretionary appointments in the Mexican federal government may not always be a consequence of patronage dynamics as portrayed above. According to our interviewees, other actors sporadically exert some influence in appointments. One mentioned, for instance, that “political groups, not necessarily parties, may matter for building political networks” (IMoUD-­01). Another one stated, “Academic groups are sometimes relevant” (IMoUD-­03), referring to the networks that graduates from well-­known private and public universities have developed across government, a point shared by other interviewees (IMoF-­01; IMoF-­03). And another interviewee, an official from the Ministry of Tourism, asserted that “business organizations are very important in the tourist sector, and therefore the opinion of businesspeople may matter for appointments” (IMoT-­ 07). This was a comment echoed in interviews with officials from the same ministry (IMoT-­01; IMoT-­09), albeit not necessarily in other ministries. One

Figure 5.4 Patronage appointments and party influence (top-­and middle-­level administrative appointments made by top administrative officials), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

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interviewee suggested that “family networks are very important. The brother of [a well-­known senator] is an undersecretary of state” (IMoUD-­07), and interviewees in the MoSD expressed a similar view (IMoSD-­04; IMoSD-­07). Lastly, a few interviewees mentioned that nongovernmental organizations and unions occasionally have some influence in discretional appointments (IMoSD-­08; IMoT-­07). Thus, patronage sometimes goes beyond the control of the president, the governing party, or the public servants themselves, and external actors have a say in some appointments. The Logic of Patronage

The third question we wanted to learn about relates to the reasons why people use patronage. What are they looking for in discretionarily appointed people? Following this volume’s research design, we asked interviewees two different questions. Given that trust is at the center of patronage relations (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018; Grindle 2012), we first asked them which source of trust seemed to be most relevant for those making discretionary appointments. Then we asked them about the kind of activities (whether professional or political) performed by appointees. In doing so, we could get a clearer idea regarding the motivations that lie beneath patronage, as well as the roles they expect their appointees to fulfill. Figures 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 summarize the responses we obtained from interviewees about the role that trust plays in patronage, including in contrast with technical expertise. In each case, results show the percentage of people who answered that it was very important or important that appointees were perceived as “independent” (for example, people who were mainly appointed because of their professional or technical skills), as having “political/­party” trust, or as having the “personal” trust of the person who appointed her/­him. While figure 5.5 represents the totals, figure 5.6 presents results for top-­level administrative appointments (only director general and deputy director general positions), and figure 5.7 shows the results for middle-­level officials (from director of area, in the top-­ranking position, down to policy analyst positions, at the lowest). In contrast with previous sections and figures in the chapter, we did not include higher-­level political appointments here because it was clear for interviewees that, by default, these were trust-­based (either politically or personally). If we first look at figure 5.5, we can observe three main findings. First, personal trust seems to be the most relevant factor to be considered for discretionary appointments. This was the perception of almost half of the interviewees (44.26 percent), who saw it as “very important/­important.”

Figure 5.5 Sources of trust in patronage appointments, percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

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In contrast, a third of interviewees (32.79 percent) thought that being perceived to be “independent” (for example, a technical expert without political or personal links) was very important/­important, and less than a quarter of interviewees (22.95 percent) considered political/­party trust to be very important/­important for discretionary appointments. Second, we can observe some variations across agencies, particularly in the case of the MoF. Indeed, in this case a higher percentage of our interviewees considered that being perceived as independent was even more relevant than personal trust, even if for a small difference. Third, as a whole, these results would seem to reinforce both our findings about the real but limited relevance that party politics play in patronage, and the legacy of Mexico’s bureaucratic apparatus that values both personal loyalties and technical capacities. One interviewee, for instance, said, “At the top-­levels it is important that everyone follows the leader, hence personal trust matters; in the middle-­levels, job-­related performance is the most important, but trust does matter” (IMoF-­03). Another one similarly stated that “personal trust is the most important, but so are political trust and technical abilities” (IMoT-­01). However, if we now turn to figures 5.6 and 5.7, a more nuanced image emerges about the role of trust (whether political or personal) in patronage. If we first look at figure 5.6 we actually get a different perspective. As has been already mentioned, this figure summarizes information only about top-­level appointments in administrative positions (for example, director general and deputy director general), leaving aside political ones. In this case, the percentage of interviewees who thought political/­party trust (38.89 percent) and personal trust (43.06 percent) were very important/­important was considerably higher, for both cases, than the percentage for being independent (18.06 percent). This is the case even for the MoF, where only a quarter (25 percent) of interviewees saw being independent as a very important/­important consideration. Indeed, one interviewee at the MoF said, “At the top-­levels, I think political trust and personal trust are needed” (IMoF-­06). In the other ministries, there were some differences about which source of trust is seen as more important. In the MoSD and the MoT personal trust was very important/­ important for most interviewees. According to one official at the MoSD, “personal trust is the most important factor” (IMoSD-­05). In the MoUD, personal trust was also rated as very important/­important by a high percentage of interviewees (42.11 percent), but political/­party trust (47.37 percent) received a higher number. Figure 5.7 below provides a contrasting, if not almost the opposite image. In this case, basically half of all interviewees (49.32 percent) said that being

Figure 5.6 Sources of trust in patronage appointments at top-­level administrative positions (director general and deputy director general), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

Figure 5.7 Sources of trust in patronage appointments at middle-­level administrative positions (director of area to policy analyst), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018

independent is considered very important/­important for middle-­level discretionary appointments. A considerable number (38.36 percent) thought personal trust was very important/­important, but only a small fraction (12.33 percent) said the same about party/­political trust. As in previous cases, it is possible to see some differences among ministries, particularly between the MoF and the others. For instance, in the MoF there is a big difference between “independent” (with 57.14 percent) and “political/­party trust” and “personal trust” (with 21.43 percent each). Yet the difference between “independent” and “personal trust” is much lower in the other three ministries. The only commonality across the board is that party/­political trust is the factor perceived to be very important/­important by the smallest number of people in each one of the ministries. These results would seem to underline again that technical capabilities are considered highly valuable in discretionary appointments at middle levels, even if people still try to appoint (whenever possible) others whom they can personally trust. As one interviewee put it, “In the middle-­level appointments they tend to choose people with technical skills, but it is still important to have the trust of the supervisor” (IMoSD-­05). The second aspect of the logic of discretionary appointments in Mexico that we want to discuss is related to the potential motivations behind the use of patronage and, linked with this, the roles that appointees are expected to perform. We asked our interviewees about five nonexclusive options: capacity to design and implement policies; capacity to drive the bureaucracy; capacity for political articulation of state activities and those of the parties or congress; capacity for political articulation of state activities with that of other sectors and/­or levels of government; and capacity to engage in electoral politics. Again, figure 5.8 reports data only on top-­level administrative positions (director general and deputy director general), and figure 5.9 reports data on middle-­level positions (director of area, deputy director of area, head of department, policy analysts). Results in both figures present responses from interviewees for each one of the motivations they thought mattered for people making discretionary appointments. Therefore, results in figure 5.8 and figure 5.9, both for Mexico and for each of the four ministries, do not add up to 100 percent. They show the percentage of interviewees that said each one of the motivations was important. If we first look at figure 5.8, we can observe two main findings. First, the five motivations seem to be important when appointing top-­level officials in a discretionary manner. In terms of Mexico as a whole, the capacity of “driving the bureaucracy” (86.11 percent) and the capacity to “articulate state activities and those of the parties or the congress” (80.56 percent) are perceived as

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Figure 5.8 Motivations for using patronage in top-­level administrative positions (director-­general and deputy director-­general), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018

the most important. But the other three capacities were also rated important by a high number of interviewees: capacity to design and implement policies (70.83 percent), capacity to articulate state activities with that of other sectors and/­or levels of government (72.22 percent), and capacity to engage in electoral politics (72.22 percent). Second, however, there is some variation among ministries, which points to the different uses patronage may have across government depending on the nature of the ministry. In the MoF, for instance, the capacity to conduct electoral politics was perceived to be important only by 37.50 percent of interviewees, in contrast to 87.5 percent for “driving the bureaucracy,” which makes sense given the technical profile of this ministry. In the MoUD and the MoSD, in contrast, the capacity for electoral politics was seen as important by 88.89 percent and 80.00 percent, respectively. Again, the relatively high relevance of electoral politics as a motivation that lies beneath patronage in these ministries would seem to be in line with their political profile. If we now turn to figure 5.9, we can observe a rather different image in relation to middle-­level appointments. First, in the total numbers for Mexico, the capacity to design and implement policies was perceived as important by the highest number of interviewees (83.33 percent), in stark contrast with other motivations such as articulating state activities and those of the parties/­the congress (25 percent) and engaging in electoral politics (25 percent). This again makes sense because figure 5.9 reflects perceptions about patronage in the positions of the federal bureaucracies that possess a more technical nature. Second, the percentage of people thinking that the capacity for engaging in electoral politics is important is only slightly higher in the MoSD (30 percent) and the MoUD (44.44 percent), which reveals a similar pattern to what was said about top-­level appointments in these ministries in figure 5.8 above. Third, it is somewhat surprising that the capacity to design and implement policies is perceived as important by the lowest number of people (56.25 percent) in the MoF, in clear contrast with the other three ministries. Yet this may be simply because interviewees in this ministry are already “discounting” the fact that anyone hired in their ministry possesses the technical skills to perform. Patronage Appointments and Roles

What do these findings say about the roles that appointees are expected to perform in their ministries? There are at least three points we can suggest. First, if we take the typology proposed by the editors of this volume, we can see that not all discretionary appointments in the Mexican federal adminis-

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Figure 5.9 Motivations for using patronage in middle-­level positions (director of area to policy analyst), percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts

Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018

tration seem to fit in one of their four models. Indeed, our findings point at a variety of roles that are related both to the hierarchical level of the appointment and to the kind of ministry in which it occurs. A plurality of patronage models seems to be the norm. Second, “nonpartisan trust” seems to be more prevalent than “partisan trust,” and thus most discretionary appointments would seem to be closer to the roles related to the latter. For instance, from our conversations with officials, the role of programmatic technocrats (those who combine nonpartisan trust and professional skills) seems to be most common in the MoF, as could be expected, but also in the other three ministries. This is in line with historical practices in Mexico’s public sector, as discussed above, which have underlined the mixture of personal trust and technical skills. On the other hand, we did not hear a lot about political agents taking part in camarillas. This was a bit surprising, but it seems to be related to the implementation of SPC rules. Despite their limitations, SPC recruitment and selection procedures seem to have complicated the formation and rotation of political groups as it was before the 2000s. Third, while not as common, partisan trust does seem to be relevant mainly in two instances. At the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy, some of the people appointed in director general and deputy director general positions did seem to play the role of party professionals. They were therefore expected to advance the governing party’s agenda and political interests. In middle-­ level positions, particularly in the more politically minded ministries (MoSD and MoUD), we did get the impression that some appointees performed the role of apparatchiks. These ministries deliver social programs and their personnel are often in contact with beneficiaries all over the territory. Given the nature of the research, we did not ask whether these exchanges led to clientelist or even corrupt practices, as documented by some authors (see Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018).

CONCLUSIONS The information we gathered in this study has allowed us to better understand the scope of patronage in the federal government of Mexico, the patterns followed by public servants when making discretionary appointments, the place that trust has in patronage, and the roles that appointees are supposed to fulfill. Based on the information presented above, we found that patronage is alive and well in the Mexican federal public sector. Despite efforts made during the 2000s after the political alternation, including the establishment of the first government-­w ide merit system (the SPC), patronage remains quite

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extended across ministries. While patronage is lawful in the case of higher-­ level political appointments (for example, secretaries/­undersecretaries of state), it has also persisted in top and middle bureaucratic levels, even if sometimes hidden behind supposedly meritocratic procedures. At the same time, we have also found that patronage varies across ministries. Variables such as ministerial mission and hierarchical level seem to influence whether appointments are mainly based on political and discretionary grounds, or they follow technical and impartial considerations instead. Indeed, even if the SPC is still far from becoming a proper civil service, its selection procedures have introduced a certain degree of competitiveness, equal opportunities, and meritocratic standards. These in turn have somewhat constrained patronage dynamics; for instance, with regards to the formation and ministerial rotation of traditional camarillas. This study has also shown that the governing party and, above all, the president play an important role in patronage, although their influence seems to vary depending on the hierarchical levels in which discretionary appointments take place. While the governing party does seem to have a say in the designation of some secretaries of state and undersecretaries, it is the president who gets consulted more often by secretaries and undersecretaries before they make an appointment. Indeed, in those instances the party does not seem to play a role at all. On the other hand, once one moves down the hierarchy, neither the president nor the party seems to matter that much. When given the opportunity, it is public servants (senior and middle-­level officials) who decide whom to appoint, either in consultation with their immediate supervisors (for example, an undersecretary of state or a director general), or on their own. Therefore, while the legacy of a strong presidentialism and the weight of the governing party are still present in Mexico, patronage patterns also follow nonpartisan dynamics in some bureaucratic levels. The information we gathered from public officials also shows that personal trust is the most important factor when appointing someone on a discretionary basis, even if there are some nuances to this assertion. For instance, partisan or political trust does matter in some cases and in some ministries, but its importance seems rather limited in other ministries as well as in middle-­level positions. In fact, for the latter positions it is the image of being independent (for example, having the capabilities for doing one’s job properly) that gains relevance. In the end, the image that emerges from the interviews is one in which both personal trust and expectations about the technical skills of appointees are taken into account. This is another finding consistent with the Mexican tradition of previous decades, which has been

Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018

marked by a patronage system heavily reliant on “technocrats.” Trust matters, but so does (potential) performance on the job. Last but not least, our findings paint a picture of a patronage system in which appointees may play a variety of roles. Programmatic technocrats in charge of driving the bureaucracy and designing/­ implementing policies definitely seem to be the most common type of role. There are party professionals and apparatchiks at the highest and lowest levels of the bureaucracy, respectively, articulating and negotiating agendas across sectors, and even doing electoral politics. However, these roles were not mentioned as often as we initially expected given the well-­known politicization of the Mexican government, and the historical relevance of political camarillas. Therefore, even if patronage is inevitably linked with personal loyalties, trust, and political dynamics, partisan principles did not emerge as fundamental as in classic descriptions of the country’s public administration. Patronage is thus still part of Mexico’s public sector DNA. Future studies will need to explore whether our findings can be extended to other federal ministries or to subnational governments. More systematic quantitative efforts and more detailed qualitative studies may complement the story we have sketched here. These studies may also look at how the patterns depicted in these pages are changing or not during the current administration of Andrés Manuel López-­Obrador. From what we heard in our interviews, political alternation this time seems to be putting SPC regulations under increased stress, with political incumbents both deepening and broadening patronage practices, and paying less attention to technical skills and more to partisan trust. While those details will need to be discussed elsewhere, they certainly point toward a future in which patronage practices are here to stay.

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Mauricio I. Dussauge-­L aguna and Alberto Casas Camp, Roderic Ai. 1983. “El tecnócrata en México.”  Revista Mexicana de Sociología 45 (2): 579–99. Camp, Roderic Ai. 1996. Reclutamiento político en México, 1884–1991. Mexico City: Siglo XXI. Dussauge-­Laguna, Mauricio I. 2005. “¿Servicio civil de carrera o servicio civil de empleo? Una breve discusión conceptual.” Revista Servicio Profesional de Carrera (3): 45–65. Dussauge-­Laguna, Mauricio I. 2007. “Paradojas de la reforma administrativa en México.” Buen Gobierno 2:28–42. Dussauge-­Laguna, Mauricio I. 2008. “Paradoxes of Public Sector Reform: The Mexican Experience (2000–2007).” International Public Management Review 9 (1): 56–75. Dussauge-­Laguna, Mauricio I. 2011. “The Challenges of Implementing Merit-­Based Personnel Policies in Latin America: Mexico’s Civil Service Reform Experience.” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 13 (1): 51–73. Grindle, Merilee S. 1977. “Patrons and Clients in the Bureaucracy: Career Networks in Mexico.” Latin American Research Review 12 (1): 37–66. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Martínez Puón, Rafael. 2006a. “Alcances y resultados del Servicio Profesional de Carrera en México.” Gestión y Política Pública 15 (2): 457–83. Martínez Puón, Rafael. 2006b. “Los desafíos de la comparación internacional.” In Los desafíos del servicio profesional de carrera en México, edited by Mauricio Merino Huerta, 287–324. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica–Secretaría de la Función Pública. Méndez, José Luis. 1997. “The Latin American Administrative Tradition.” In International Encyclopedia of Public Administration, edited by Jay M. Shafritz. Boulder, CO: Westview. Méndez, José Luis. 2010. “Implementing Developed Countries’ Administrative Reforms in Developing Countries: The Case of Mexico.” In Comparative Administrative Change and Reform: Lessons Learned, edited by Jon Pierre and Patricia W. Ingraham, 159–81. Montreal: McGill-­Q ueen’s University Press. Méndez, José Luis. 2018. Comparación de los servicios profesionales de carrera de México y Brasil. Brasília: Escola Nacional de Administração Pública and Faculdade Latino-­Americana de Ciências Sociais Brasil. https:/­/­repositorio.enap.gov.br/­bitstream/­1 /­3952/­1 /­Caderno-­61 _Comparaci%C3%B3n%20de%20los%20Servicios%20Profesionales%20de%20Carrera %20de%20M%C3%A9xico%20y%20Brasil.pdf. Méndez, José Luis, and Mauricio I. Dussauge-­Laguna. 2017. Policy Analysis in Mexico. Bristol: Policy Press. Merino Huerta, Mauricio. 2006a. Introduction to Los desafíos del servicio profesional de carrera en México, edited by Mauricio Merino Huerta, 15–28. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas–Secretaría de la Función Pública.

Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018 Merino Huerta, Mauricio. 2006b. “Los desafíos de una nueva ética pública.” In Los desafíos del servicio profesional de carrera en México, edited by Mauricio Merino Huerta, 29–62. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas–Secretaría de la Función Pública. Merino Huerta, Mauricio. 2013. “La captura de los puestos públicos.”  Revista mexicana de ciencias políticas y sociales 58 (219): 135–56. Morales Camarena, Francisco Javier. 1994. La tecnocracia en México: las actitudes políticas de los funcionarios públicos. Mexico City: Colegio Nacional de Ciencias Políticas y Administración Pública. Nieto, Fernando, and María del Carmen Pardo. 2019. “La implementación del servicio profesional de carrera, 2003–2012.” In Variaciones de implementación: ocho casos de política pública, edited by Guillermo M. Cejudo, María del Carmen Pardo, and Mauricio I. Dussauge Laguna, 35–63. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development). 2011. Hacia una gestión pública más efectiva y dinámica en México. Paris: OECD Publishing. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos Larraburu, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. “Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina’s and Uruguay’s Central Public Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Pardo, María del Carmen. 1995. “El servicio civil de carrera en México: un imperativo de la modernización.” Gestión y Política Pública 4 (2): 277–302. Pardo, María del Carmen. 2005. El servicio profesional de carrera en México: de la tradición al cambio. Foro Internacional 45 (4): 599–634. Pardo, María del Carmen. 2009. La modernización administrativa en México, 1940–2006. Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Vázquez Luna, Marcela Isabel R. 2017. “Mérito e igualdad de oportunidades en el ingreso y permanencia de los servidores públicos de carrera de la Administración Pública Federal: ¿combatiendo legados?” BA thesis, El Colegio de México.

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6 Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru

Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar

I

n this chapter we aim to characterize and explain the mechanisms of discretionary appointments in the Peruvian central government. We use the term patronage as it has been defined in the introduction of this book; that is, as “the political actors’ power to discretionally appoint officials in public administration irrespectively of the legality of the appointment and the merits of the appointee.” Thus, while reading this chapter, it should be kept in mind that we do not equate patronage with clientelism as done by a strand of the literature (Stokes 2007; Hicken 2011; Stokes et al. 2013; González-­Ocantos and Muñoz 2017, among others).1 Following the lead of Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis (2015), we applied a modified version of Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova’s (2012) survey to measure the scope of discretionary appointments, the patrons’ motivations, and the capabilities sought from appointees, across five ministries: Economy and Finances (MEF), Agriculture (MINAGRI), Social Inclusion and Development (MIDIS), Education (MINEDU), and Mining and Energy (MINEM). We conducted sixty interviews with current and former members of the administration, and experts on Peru’s public sector. Our questionnaire contained two sections. The first one included structured questions adapted from Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova’s (2012) survey; the second was an open-­question section aimed at capturing the interviewees’ perceptions about changes in the practices of discretionary appointments from one administration to an-

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other, the advantages and disadvantages of institutionalizing informal appointment practices, and perceptions about the ongoing civil service reform. We selected the sample using a snowballing technique and administered the questionnaire through face-­to-­face interviews. We conducted the interviews in two rounds: one between September and December 2016 and the other between January and August 2018, focusing on the administrations of Ollanta Humala (2011–2016) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016–2018). We also included retrospective questions for those participants who had previously held public posts during other administrations. The Peruvian case is key for the comparative study of discretionary appointments in Latin America, for two reasons. First, Peru displays a remarkably low value in one of the main explanatory variables in accounting for variations in patronage roles in the collective research agenda: party system institutionalization. Second, Peru is also an interesting case for the study of discretionary appointments in Latin America because in 2008 it formally launched a statewide civil service reform with the aim of establishing a meritocratic civil service, although it has not substantially lessened the importance of patronage appointments in the country’s central public administration. In sum, the combination of limited party institutionalization, low state capacity, and ongoing civil service reform constitute a particular institutional context for discretionary practices.

PARTY SYSTEM INSTITUTIONALIZATION IN PERU Peru stands outs in Latin America as a case with very low levels of party system institutionalization (Jones 2005; Torcal 2015; Mainwaring 2018). In fact, scholars have even characterized Peru as a “democracy without parties” (Levitsky and Cameron 2003; Tanaka 2005; Levitsky 2013) and a “non-­party non-­system” (Sánchez 2009). In this context, without organized political parties or an enduring system of electoral competition, politics is constantly in flux. And because of that, long-­lasting forms of clientelism are difficult to maintain and politicians have opted to engage in short-­term clientelist exchanges as a way of buying participation at campaign events (Muñoz 2014, 2018) as well as related distributive strategies, such as pork barreling and corruption (Muñoz 2016). In general, politicians have become accustomed to relying on party substitutes to compete electorally and to govern, and therefore do not invest much in party building (Zavaleta 2014; Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016). In this depoliticized context, partisan patronage is also scarce (Muñoz 2016). What Peruvians call “political parties” are not actually enduring political

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organizations but temporary coalitions of independent local politicians who come together in order to legally register and compete more effectively in elections, but disband shortly after the election is over (Levitsky 2013; Zavaleta 2014; Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016). Not only do most Peruvians not have a partisan identity but the vast majority of them (more than 90 percent) distrust parties (Carrión and Zárate 2018). Moreover, these electoral vessels are very personalist, structured through personal links around the main political candidate. Therefore, it is not surprising that some parties even incorporate elements of their presidential candidate’s name to their own denomination (such as Peruanos Por el Kambio, which identified itself as PPK—­the initials by which its candidate, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was widely known). In power, these “parties” do not rule as governing parties (Dargent and Muñoz 2012) because they have little in the way of political cadres on which to draw or appoint as ministers. Furthermore, since 2001, no governing party has been able to retain the presidency or even secure a respectable congressional representation in the following election, despite having outstanding economic records (Arce and Incio 2018; Campello 2014). The timeframe of our study focuses, first, on the Ollanta Humala administration (2011–2016). Humala emerged as a nationalist and left-­leaning outsider candidate in the 2006 presidential election, and almost won. In that election, Humala was ultimately defeated by Alan García, whose earlier presidency (1985–1990) left the country in its most profound economic and political crisis in modern times. Even so, most citizens preferred García’s discourse of responsible change over the radical outsider.2 Humala ran again for the presidency in 2011 but this time he moderated his discourse, promising a responsible handling of the economy. He made it to the runoff against Keiko Fujimori, and managed to win the presidency on the strength of the strategic anti-­Fujimorista voters who preferred Humala to the daughter of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). Humala’s government proved much more moderate than anticipated by right-­w ing voters (Barrenechea and Sosa 2014; Muñoz and Guibert 2016). As has occurred repeatedly in Peru since the early 1990s (Dargent 2015; Vergara and Encinas 2016; Vergara and Watanabe 2019), Humala appointed members of the technocratic elite as ministers of economy and finances, and did not make substantive changes to the neoliberal economic model in force since the Fujimori administration. Moreover, Humala did little to consolidate his party, Partido Nacionalista Peruano (Nationalist Peruvian Party). As we will see, in order to govern he relied heavily on technocrats, who filled most ministerial roles. In the congressional realm, the Partido Nacionalista Peruano

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split very early in his presidential term and ended up losing its majority in congress (Muñoz and Guibert 2016). Moreover, in contrast to previous governments, Humala faced a congress with a more organized political opposition, since the Fujimoristas invested time and resources in party building for the 2011 election (Urrutia 2011; Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016). Executive-­ legislative relations became more conflictive over time and Humala ended his term in political isolation together with his technocrats (Muñoz and Guibert 2016). And, as has become a constant since 2006, the Partido Nacionalista Peruano was not able to run a viable presidential candidate for the 2016 elections; its candidate was a technocrat who ended up pulling out of the race.3 Since the chances of Keiko Fujimori winning the presidency were high, the great divide in the 2016 elections was, again, between the Fujimorista party, Fuerza Popular (Popular Force), and its presidential candidate, and its opponents.4 The first round was fundamentally a fight for second place, since Fujimori was almost guaranteed a spot in the runoff. The electoral campaign brought many surprises, as two centrist candidates who had been rising in the polls were disqualified by the electoral board (Dargent and Muñoz 2016). These controversial decisions left a portion of the electorate looking for another candidate to support, which helped a leftist candidate to rise in the opinion polls. Again, this frightened many center-­r ight voters into strategically supporting Kuczynski, a technocrat and former minister of the economy. After a highly polarized campaign between Fujimoristas and anti-­ Fujimoristas, Kuczynski unexpectedly won the presidency by a very small margin, with the support of anti-­Fujimorista voters (Dargent and Muñoz 2016). Indeed, Peruvians elected a divided government with an absolute congressional majority in the hands of the Fujimorista opposition. The relationship between the executive branch and the legislature became even more conflictive and tense from the very beginning of PPK’s government, and the president made a series of very poor decisions (Vergara 2018). Tensions escalated over time, as Fujimoristas became more and more intransigent and abused their majority in congress to question and censor various cabinet ministers, leading to the loss of four of Kuczynski’s ministers during the first year of his administration. Kuscynski resigned from the presidency in March 2018 after only twenty months in office, following an intense political crisis related to his alleged involvement in corruption episodes related to the region-­w ide Operation Car Wash corruption investigation, and to his controversial decision to pardon Alberto Fujimori on Christmas Eve 2017 (Vergara 2018). Overall, as we can see, within a context of scarcely organized political par-

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ties, politics changes fast and unexpectedly. Studying how discretionary appointments work in such a changing political environment is thus important for a comparative agenda. Including Peru in this analysis is also relevant considering the prevailing trend toward party and party system deinstitutionalization in Latin America, particularly in the Andean region (Gutiérrez Sanín 2007; Seawright 2006; Sánchez 2009; Dargent and Muñoz 2011; Morgan 2011; Jones 2005). In time, party systems in many countries may become more like the Peruvian one.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN PERU As mentioned above, Peru is also an interesting case for the study of discretionary public appointments in Latin America because, despite low levels of state capacity, it formally launched a statewide civil service reform in 2008 with the aim of establishing a meritocratic civil service. By studying hiring practices in five ministries, we also evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this ongoing civil service reform. The reform, if fully put into practice, could threaten the status quo established by the Peruvian technocracy during the twenty-­first century. Peru remains one of the least capable states in Latin America (Centeno 2009; Soifer 2015; Dargent et al. 2017). Its civil service is still a complicated and confusing system in which several old and new labor regimes coexist. Until 2012 Peru had 1.3 million public servants organized under fifteen different labor regimes, including nine special career regimes, three general regimes, and three additional non-­career-­related regimes. The general labor regimes, still in force, are the (original) administrative career regime (Legislative Decree 276) from 1984, the private activity regime (Legislative Decree 728), and the administrative services procurement regime (Contratación Administrativa de Servicios, CAS; Legislative Decree 1057). The latter was a special arrangement created in 2008 to address the problem of nearly two hundred thousand public workers on temporary contracts who were not entitled to basic labor rights such as social security and vacations. It was within this institutional context that Peru launched the civil service reform. The reform began in 2008 with the creation of the National Civil Service Authority (Autoridad Nacional de Servicio Civil, SERVIR), through Legislative Decree 1023,5 but gained momentum in 2013 only with the promulgation of the Civil Service Law (Law 30057). This law provided for the creation of a new civil service regime with four categories of public personnel: government officials, public managers, career civil servants, and so-­called servants

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru

of complementary activities. The three latter categories allow for “confidence appointees”; that is, individuals legally appointed at the discretion of their superiors, without a public contest. However, the law stipulates that confidence appointments can account for no more than 5 percent of the total workforce in each public entity (Articles 77 and 79), of which a maximum of 5 percent may be appointed to management positions (Article 64). The reform had been slowly advancing until 2016–2017, but the tumultuous political context of the Kuczynski administration led to stagnation. In 2015, according to data from the Ministry of Labor, approximately 20 percent of civil servants were still employed under the CAS regime, while 12 percent had service contracts (as locadores de servicios, or service providers). According to SERVIR’s documents and statistics from 2013–2018,6 425 public entities were in the process of transitioning to the new regime regulated by the Civil Service Law. Of these, 204 were at the first stage, involving “initial incorporation of the transition process, and preparation of the entity”; 167 were at the second stage, “situational analysis of the entity” (of which 108 had completed the “place mapping” stage, 30 the “process mapping” stage, and 29 the “improvement” stage); 53 were at third stage, the “internal improvement” stage; and only one was at the final stage, “public contests under the new regime.” Of the 425 entities in transition, 188 were national-­level (including the 19 ministries), 41 were regional-­level, and 196 were local-­level.7 Although the number of entities in transition has increased almost twentyfold since 2013 (when there were only 23 entities in transition), advances had been formal rather than substantive. That is, the entities have prepared the formal documents needed to initiate the transition process, but this does not mean that they have already taken all the necessary steps for the establishment of a meritocratic bureaucracy.

SCOPE OF DISCRETIONARY APPOINTMENTS IN PERU To determine the scope of patronage appointments in the Peruvian central government we asked interviewees to calculate approximately how many of the hires at different levels of the administration (high, middle, and low) in their area were discretionary appointments. We consider the high level of administration to be composed of general managers and “line” managers along with the general secretary (we did not include ministers and vice ministers because by definition they are political positions appointed by the president on the basis of personal trust). The middle level consists of heads of office and

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Figure 6.1 Structure of ministries in Peru experts (such as analysts, coordinators, and the like). Finally, the lower level is made up of administrative personnel. Our results show that discretionary appointments were widely spread across the six ministries under study. In this sense, Peru is in fact a patronage system “where discretionary appointments for personal and/­or political purposes is a principal route to a non-­elected position in government for a large proportion of those enjoying such positions” (Grindle 2012, 18). After aggregating responses (figs. 6.2 and 6.3), we observe that there was a high prevalence of discretionary appointments at the higher levels and less so at middle levels of the administration. At the highest level, 26 out of 58 respondents pointed out that discretionary appointments made up “all” or “almost all appointments.” At the middle level, 19 out of 55 respondents considered that discretionary appointments represented all or almost all appointments. Respondents did not give approximates regarding the scope of discretionary appointments at the lowest level, because they were less familiar with and less interested in the hiring procedures at that level. Moreover, the total number of respondents varied by level because some interviewees were able to answer the question for the highest level but not for the middle one. The mechanisms behind discretionary appointments vary, depending on the level of the administration. At the highest level, most discretionary ap-

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru

Figure 6.2 Level of discretionary appointments at the highest level according to interviewees. Source: Survey of experts

Figure 6.3 Level of discretionary appointments at the medium level according to interviewees. Source: Survey of experts pointments are “legally discretionary,” which means that they are authorized by law, although legally only 20 percent of all managers can be appointed discretionarily on the basis of trust (funcionarios de confianza). Less legally straightforward mechanisms can be observed at the middle level of the administration, which includes specialists and coordinators, among others. The most common strategy involves preselecting candidates for a CAS position

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before publicizing the contest.8 For example, the position might already be intended for a person whom the director or office head trusts and wants to hire. Thus, the terms of reference would be written in such a way that the individual in question would be the only one eligible (for example, by stipulating a combination of years of specialized studies and experience in the area that exactly matches the qualifications of the earmarked candidate). Another common strategy is initially hiring people through a temporary service order (not a legal position) in order to “test them,” and only afterward initiate a contest whose outcome will be predetermined. Something similar can be seen with management-­level positions. CAS positions can be used as probationary periods to evaluate possible future managers. By the time a management position becomes vacant, the appointment will already have been decided informally. As some of our interviewees put it: “In the leadership positions there is a reference issue to see that they meet the profile, and in the others CAS is wide open.” (Interviewee from the MINEDU) “It’s a typical relationship of trust and clientelism, I look for people to work for me that I know[;] what’s more, you see “tribes” going around in the public sector.” (Interviewee from the MEF) “The specialist is your trusted staff [sic], so for the general manager to submit them to an open public contest is a gamble.” (Interviewee from the MIDIS)

The predetermined CAS contest also reflects failures in the design of CAS contracts. On the one hand, hiring through the CAS system is a lengthy process in which a successful outcome is not guaranteed, insofar as there may be no applicants, which would mean that the process would have to start all over again. So, it is normal to “invite” people to participate in the contest or even to design the contest with an appointee already in mind so as to avoid the risk of such an outcome. In other words, open contests would take too long, and technocrats are under considerable pressure to work fast and efficiently. Thus, they do not want to risk losing several months to a hiring process that does not even guarantee they will find someone with the desired profile. “There is a delay in getting the CAS, five months I’ve seen, I’ve seen in some cases five, six months.” (Interviewee from the MIDIS) “Then it takes so much to get to that CAS process because there are several previous steps so it is better when you already have them identified at hand by the time when you open the contest, because if the contest fails and you have

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru no one, not even a couple or three so you say, ‘Right, I’ll choose between these three,’ starting over is about three months.” (Interviewee from the MINAGRI) “What happens is that you can spend two months, three months, making a CAS contest that might then fall through because you missed a signature and you have to start over and that’s another three months.” (Interviewee from the MINEDU)

On the other hand, the CAS system does not allow for advancement, so if a specialist or an analyst is awarded a promotion or a raise, a new CAS contest must be opened for the promoted position, even if a decision has already been made. “A person hired under the CAS regime, today they are an analyst and tomorrow to be an analyst, they have to apply for a position to be analyst 2, which is higher up than being analyst 1, before being a coordinator.” (Interviewee from the MINEM) “There is no promotion system here, I mean, it is not that every once in a while you prepare and you can climb from one position to another.” (Interviewee from the MINEDU)

Finally, CAS contests are seldom truly public and meritocratic. This scenario—­the ideal according to the law—­occurs in contexts in which trust networks do not work or are not enough to identify potential candidates (such as positions in provinces), or when the posts to be filled are not politically sensitive or do not involve high administrative (and technical) responsibility. Our informants identified trust as the main reason for making discretionary appointments. However, in contrast to some of the other cases discussed in this book, partisan trust played almost no role in the appointments. Officeholders prefer to use networks of personal trust (directly or indirectly) to identify potential candidates who meet the required professional profile. The definition of the profile usually exceeds technical capabilities, to include subjective criteria, such as political responsibility, that can be considered only if one knows the candidate well. In fact, several interviewees assured us that open contests are rarely used. Some even admit that they would not like to call a contest without having certain predetermined candidates. The main reason they give to justify this practice is the aforementioned difficulties and risks associated with the hiring process. Some of our interviewees also said that they do not trust the bureaucracy

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Table 6.1. Discretionary appointment at the highest level by sector Interviewees Interviewees responding “all responding “many” Percentage or almost all” total Number Percentage Number Percentage

Ministry

Total number of interviewees

Economy and Finances

9

4

44%

4

44%

88%

Social Inclusion and Development

15

3

20%

8

53%

73%

Education Agriculture

14 13

2 6

14% 46%

7 6

50% 46%

64% 92%

Mining and Energy

7

4

57%

1

14%

71%

Table 6.2. Discretionary appointments at the middle level by sector Interviewees reInterviewees responding “all sponding “many” Percentage or almost all” total Number Percentage Number Percentage

Ministry

Total number of interviewees

Economy and Finances

9

0

0%

5

56%

56%

Social Inclusion and Development

15

1

7%

6

40%

47%

Education Agriculture

14 13

1 2

7% 15%

2 3

14% 23%

21% 38%

Mining and Energy

7

0

0%

0

0%

0%

(that is, the human resources areas) that would be in charge of administering these processes because they consider it highly unpredictable. In general, human resources offices in the Peruvian state are seen as planilleros, whose role is limited to processing payrolls rather than being entrusted with appointments to middle and high level positions. “In human resources, they devote themselves more to the payrolls than to the development of human resources, from profile changes, doing an induction well, training those in need . . . , that is, you don’t have a critical mass of human resources managers to give you peace of mind” (interviewee from the MIDIS). Finally, they also believe that for some positions, the labor market is small and deficient. Thus, they preselect candidates who they know for sure will perform as expected. Regarding the scale of discretionary appointment at the highest and

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru

middle levels of the administration, we find that the results tend to be similar across sectors. Since the number of interviewees varied by sector, we compare sectors by taking as a baseline the number of interviewees that answered the relevant question in each sector. More than half of the interviewees across ministries considered that the extent of discretionary appointments at the highest level was substantial (“all or almost all” and “many”); see table 6.1.There were some variations between ministries: relatively fewer interviewees considered that all or almost all of the appointments at the highest level of both the MIDIS and the MINEDU were discretionary, although over half of them considered that many appointments were discretionary in the two ministries in question. According to the interviewees, at the middle level of the administration relatively fewer appointments were considered discretionary compared to the top level, although interviewees considered that many appointments were discretionary at this level at the MEF and the MIDIS (table 6.2). In contrast, none of the interviewees said that “all or almost all” or “many” appointments were discretionary at the MINEM, which may be accounted for by the more technical character of the ministry.

POWER OF APPOINTMENT, MOTIVATIONS, AND ROLES In keeping with this book’s general focus, we are also interested in finding out which actors have real powers of appointment: is it the party in office, the people occupying political positions (president or ministers), or line managers in the administration? Unsurprisingly, given the weakness of political parties in Peru, we find that discretionary appointments are mostly decided by occupants of political positions, principally ministers, rather than the ruling party, and that power of appointment cascades down throughout the managerial hierarchy. Most appointments are made independently by the officeholder (minister or vice minister in the case of managers; managers in the case of specialists; and so on). This is closely related to the issue of personal trust that we will discuss in the next section. Some of our interviewees explained that this cascading of power to appoint at the various levels of public administration is related to the importance of personal trust in the hiring process. If a minister trusts the manager he or she appoints, then he or she will also trust that manager to make a good choice in appointing a specialist. None of the fifty-­nine interviewees who answered questions about the power to make discretionary appointments claimed that political parties had the power to do so. Rather, they stated that appointments were made

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by the individual in charge with or without consultation with their immediate superior. However, there is some variation among the interviewees in terms of whether appointments are made with or without consultation with the appointer’s immediate superior At two ministries, the MINAGRI and the MINEM, most appointments were made in consultation with the immediate superior. At the other three ministries, more than half of the respondents said that the appointments were made by the officeholder without consultation. A central part of this project entails identifying the political motivations behind discretionary appointments. If discretionary appointments cannot be reduced to clientelist exchanges, then the motivations behind them should go beyond the simple accumulation of electoral resources to consider other plausible motives, such as the accumulation of politico-­organizational or governmental resources. Moreover, officeholders may have more than one motivation for making discretionary appointments. To avoid an overly simplistic analysis of discretionary appointments, we considered four alternative motivations besides electoral ones: policy design and implementation, exercising control over the bureaucracy, acting as ministry liaison to the incumbent party or congress, and articulating the ministry with other sectors or levels of government. As can be seen in table 6.3, there were almost no cases of appointments being made for electoral purposes (only one interviewee stated that conducting electoral politics was an important motive for discretionary appointments). The second motivation that could be perceived as political, articulating with the party or congress, was regarded as important by only nine of the fifty-­seven interviewees who answered the question. This is a reflection of the weakness of Peruvian parties. The design and implementation of policies stood out as the main motivation for discretionary appointments. The results showed that ministers and vice ministers mostly looked for managers who can help them in achieving their policy goals. Hence, the most important motivation for discretionary appointments, according to our interviewees, was ensuring that the appointee has the capabilities to design and implement policies. In other words, they are more interested in technical cadres than in political ones. During the interviews, informants highlighted the need to recruit individuals who also possessed a set of difficult-­to-­find soft skills. For them, this is what justifies the use of discretionary appointments, since they need someone who not only matches the technical expertise profile but also has proven skills for working as part of a team or in high-­pressure situations—­which, they al-

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru

Table 6.3. Motives behind discretionary appointment Motive

Number of interviewees who considered it important

Improving policy design and implementation

57

Exercising control over the bureaucracy

23

Liaising for the ministry with the incumbent party or congress

9

Articulating the ministry with other sectors or levels of government

39

Doing electoral politics

1

Note: Total number of interviewees = 57

leged, can only be known for sure if the appointer knows the applicant or has a direct reference for her. In summary, nearly all appointments in the ministries under study were made taking into consideration the policy goals of the officeholder. Ministers, vice ministers, and managers carefully weigh the policy expertise of potential appointees. But how do they choose between professionals with technical qualifications? Given a certain level of policy expertise among candidates, officeholders might place varying weight on other criteria to decide whom to hire. Do they prioritize technical cadres who are politically independent, or do they prefer professionals whom the party trusts? In addition, how important is personal trust for the officeholder as a criterion for patronage appointments in the Peruvian central government? Do these considerations vary across levels of administration or ministries? To answer these questions, we asked our interviewees to arrange, from most to least important, three potential motivations for hiring someone with technical skills: being politically independent, having the trust of the party, or having personal trust. Here too it is clear that parties have little to no influence on the appointment process. Of the fifty-­seven interviewees who answered the question, only two considered party trust as the most important criterion, while the majority pointed out personal trust and political independence as the most important ones. According to our interviewees, personal trust is also important because personal knowledge of a candidate tells patrons more about the candidate’s capabilities than any of the formal steps in the hiring process can. Some of our interviewees said that simply reviewing a CV and participating in a personal interview cannot tell them enough about the nontechnical abilities of

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the applicant. Thus, hiring someone who is already part of a known network of high-­level bureaucrats or technocrats is crucial. One of our interviewees even refers to this as an informal labor pool of technocrats: “There is in the end an informal labor exchange in the public sector. . . . Everyone gets recycled, but why? Because you need someone who knows how entangled public regulations are in Peru, who knows about hiring, who knows the legal part, who knows the strategic part, the budget part” (former vice minister at MEF and public official at SERVIR, October 4, 2016). The capacity to design and implement policy was regarded as the main motivation for appointments across all ministries (table 6.3). All of the interviewees from MEF, MINAGRI, and MINEM and most of those from MIDIS and MIUNEDU pointed to the importance of this motive. It might be argued that the high number of respondents who identified the capacity to design and implement policy as an important motive could be displaying social desirability bias because public officials want to be seen as responsible and programmatic. But this can be ruled out by looking at the second most important motivation in all ministries, “articulating with other sectors or levels of administration.” Analyzing the interviews, it becomes clear that the motivation is perceived mostly as a technically oriented skill. Most of our respondents were public managers concerned about improving interinstitutional coordination between sectors and levels of government, to ensure that their policies were implemented correctly. If the role has a political dimension, it can be considered political not in partisan or electoral terms but in the sense that it is related to achieving policy goals. On the other hand, a more openly political motivation, such as articulating with the party or congress is considered less important by interviewees across all sectors. This is also true for conducting electoral politics, which was regarded as important by only one interviewee from MINAGRI. The patrons’ motivations for making appointments largely determine the roles played by appointees within the public administration. The introduction to this volume introduces a typology of patronage roles based on two criteria: the nature of the relation of trust between patrons and appointees and the main skills required to perform their jobs. Regarding trust, the typology distinguishes between trust of a partisan and of a nonpartisan, mainly personal, nature. Partisan trust is used as proxy for the strength of political parties. Concerning skills, the typology distinguishes between technoprofessional skills on the one hand and political skills on the other. Based on these criteria, the typology sets up four main roles plus a number of subroles: party professionals (partisan trust plus technoprofessional skills), apparatchiks (partisan

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Figure 6.4 Patrons’ motivations for patronage appointments by ministry. Source: Survey of experts trust plus political skills), programmatic technocrats (nonpartisan trust plus technical skills), and political agents (nonpartisan trust and political skills). Patronage roles in Peru are overwhelmingly located in the lower quadrants of the typology as programmatic technocrats and political agents, reflecting the weakness of political parties in the country and the personal nature of the relation of trust between appointer and appointees. Of these roles, according to the survey, programmatic technocrats was by far the main role played by appointees, As noted above, articulating with other sectors and levels of the administration and exercising direct or control the bureaucracy were also cited as important motivations for appointments. According to the typology, these roles require predominantly political skills, which, combined with the personal nature of the relation of trust identified as dominant in Peru, would define appointees performing these tasks in the role of political agents. Yet an important caveat is required in the case of Peru. As noted above, the goal of interbureaucratic coordination was regarded as technical rather than political in nature and performed mainly by public sector managers. Similarly “control over the bureaucracy” was understood in terms of control over policy implementation rather than over state resources. While these activities require some typically political skills, such as interpersonal communications, bargaining, and compromises, these are not party political skills and the roles may be best characterized as “technocratic agents” to signify their hybrid nature and the considerable weight of technical skills in performing

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the roles. The almost total lack of relevance of the motivation “conducting electoral politics” means that the roles labeled in the typology as electoral brokers (a subcategory of apparatchiks) and electoral agents (a subcategory of political agents) that are closely associated to brokerage and clientelism were almost totally absent from Peru’s central public administration.

EXPLAINING THE PATTERNS OF DISCRETIONARY, NONPARTISAN, TECHNICAL APPOINTMENTS As we have shown, discretionary appointments in the Peruvian central state were made, predominantly, by individuals in positions of power (officeholders) rather than political parties or factions; that is, persons rather than collectivities. Second, technicoprofessional qualifications and experience were considered fundamental to recruiting new appointees. This is because the main motivation of officials was to recruit people who can help them design and implement their preferred public policies. Finally, discretionary appointments are mainly based on relations of personal trust rather than partisan identification or partisan trust. On the one hand, personal trust is an important criterion for delegating the power to appoint down the bureaucratic chain of command. On the other hand, personal trust is also a crucial criterion to decide whom to hire. Public officials prefer to hire people who are close to their personal and professional networks. As they themselves explained, direct personal knowledge of the appointee or personal trust in someone who can attest to this person’s trustworthiness helps to make the recruitment process less uncertain and risky. We believe that in the Peruvian case two main factors are crucial to understanding this outcome. First is the low levels of party system institutionalization. The party system collapsed in the early 1990s and did not subsequently recover in the sense of institutionalizing a predictable and durable pattern of political competition. New “parties” are formed all the time, but they remain personalist vehicles, without successfully engaging in party building (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016; Muñoz and Dargent 2016). The absence of durable, organized parties means the absence of collective organizations pushing for their interests. This makes discretionary appointments extremely dependent on personal relations and informal professional networks. Moreover, without collective identities and brands, appointments are based almost entirely on relations of personal trust. Peru has very weak political parties, so partisan identities cannot help as an informational device to ascertain people’s beliefs and viewpoints or as a collective identity that enlarges personal networks of trust. In fact, having weakly organized political parties is a far more im-

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portant factor than other formal institutional variables such as presidential powers. This explains, for instance, why different types of discretionary appointments predominated in Peru in the 1980s (partisan patronage translated into the appointment of apparatchiks and party professionals) and the 2000s (nonpartisan technical discretionary appointments in the form of programmatic technocrats). Second, the predominance of nonpartisan technocrats is also endogenous to the growing autonomy and power of technocratic actors in the Peruvian state, and to the technocrats’ increasing power vis-­à-­v is politicians. Since the collapse of the party system in the 1990s, technocrats have progressively displaced politicians from the state apparatus. Technocrats rose to power after Alberto Fujimori’s self-­coup in 1992 and the demise of political parties and partisan patronage. To govern after the coup Fujimori garnered the support of unelected technocrats and the military (Mauceri 1995). In exchange for providing economic expertise, technocrats gained protection against political influence and control over economic policymaking (Vergara and Watanabe 2019). Thus, these autonomous neoliberal technocrats recruited a new cohort of young professionals, brought into the state from the private sector, who helped Fujimori to implement highly radical neoliberal reforms (Dargent 2015). The success of their economic policies allowed technocrats to legitimize their power and to maintain their primacy in the state’s administration even after the demise of Fujimorismo. During the 2000s technocrats managed to consolidate their power vis-­ à-­v is politicians and their almost nonexistent political parties (Dargent 2015; Vergara and Encinas 2016; Vergara and Watanabe 2019). They were able to adapt to the new democratic context and to defend the neoliberal policy paradigm (Vergara and Encinas 2016). Moreover, they have displaced more and more professional politicians from positions of power. Since the return to constitutional order in 2001 inexperienced or unpopular politicians have relied increasingly on technocrats to govern (Dargent 2015). Thus, while technocratic ministers accounted for 49 percent of the cabinet during Alejandro Toledo’s administration (2001–2006), the figure rose to 63 percent during Alan García’s term (2006–2011), 75 percent during Humala’s, and 70 percent during Kuczynski’s (Vergara and Watanabe 2019). This is surprising, particularly considering that García was a high-­profile leader of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party (APRA), the oldest and most organized party in Peru.9 The increasing power of technocrats became even more evident during Humala’s term. This formerly radical leftist outsider, who preached against neoliberalism and promised a great transformation of

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Peruvian institutions, ended up switching to the right and relying on technocrats to govern (Dargent and Muñoz 2012; Meléndez and Sosa 2013; Barrenechea and Sosa 2014; Muñoz and Guibert 2016). With time, technocrats developed an esprit de corps based on shared discourse, practices, approaches, and common interests (Vergara and Encinas 2016). Technocrats have imposed, among other things, their views on how hiring processes should be conducted. Not only does Peru lack organized political parties but the politicians who reach government do not have coherent political or ideological projects to implement. Policy implementation, as a political goal pursued through discretionary appointments, is much more the result of the technocrats’ interests. Moreover, policy implementation sells itself well to heads of state. Presidents who lack political cadres to govern still want to show the citizenry that they are able to deliver major national and local public goods (such as roads, schools, and hospitals) and services. During the period under study, even some important reforms, such as education reform, were designed and pushed by technocrats employed as ministers. In addition to these two main factors, a third dimension that explains some of the variation in patronage practices found across ministries is related to the policy domain. The scope of patronage appointments does not vary much across ministries, though it tends to be higher at the top level of administration than at the middle one. Only MINEM interviewees claimed that patronage appointments were nonexistent at the middle level of the ministry. According to the interviewees, this had to do with the relatively high degree of specialization that a more technical ministry like MINEM required. Indeed, MINEM stands out also in terms of the motivations behind discretionary appointments at the top level of the administration: it was the only ministry in which there were zero responses related to the more politically-­ related motivations (electoral politics, articulating with congress and the governing party and controlling the bureaucracy). This may, again, be related to the more technical character of this ministry’s personnel, and with its smaller size. Another slight variation in motivations across ministries can be found in the number of respondents who selected “control of the bureaucracy” as a motivation for discretionary appointments. This category was slightly more common in bigger, more complex, ministries (MINAGRI and MINEDU), but it was also significant for the MEF. Indeed, MEF technocrats seemed more interested in ensuring their hires help them control the public sector bureaucracy, not only within MEF but in other ministries as well. In contrast, they were seen to be less interested in articulating. This may reflect MEF’s relative

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power vis-­à-­v is other ministries and the way economic technocrats see their role within the state structure. Finally, we also found an interesting variation in the degree of autonomy that officeholders gave subordinates to make discretionary appointments. Most of the interviewees from MINAGRI and MINEM said they usually make discretionary appointments in consultation with their immediate superior, while the technocrats interviewed in the other three sectors answered that they had more autonomy to make such decisions. A possible explanation is that MINAGRI and MINEM are more vertical ministries because of the predominance of engineers among their public officials. But the different pattern may also be explained by the greater presence of economists working in the other three ministries (MEF, MIDIS, and MINEDU). On the one hand, during Humala’s administration a network of former MEF officials moved first to MIDIS (at the time of its creation) and, later, to MINEDU. In addition, the comparably high level of independence seen in ministries such as MIDIS and MINEDU may be linked with the memory of the high degree of politicization that these ministries experienced in the past. These two social policy ministries were politicized during APRA’s first government (1985– 1990) and under Fujimori’s rule. It makes sense that total independence in the hiring process became a very important characteristic of the power of appointment during technocratic rule. However, according to some of the interviewees, this relatively higher independence may have changed during the Kuczynski administration, when a new network of technocrats who had been out of the public sector for a long time replaced the existing one at MIDIS; and also when a former vice minister of education, a pedagogue, was appointed minister—­after Jaime Saavedra, the technocratic economic minister, was ousted by congress—­and brought his own professional and personal network back to the ministry.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT In the introduction to this chapter we questioned whether a reform aimed at stablishing a meritocratic civil service in Peru would be successful. This is particularly interesting because of the high reliance on discretionary appointments that we have observed in each of the ministries under study, and because even though the reform has been ongoing for over ten years, so far only one public sector entity has managed to reach the final stage. Our survey included a section about the civil service reform, asking respondents to evaluate whether the reform was positive or not, what its achievements were, and what weak points they identified. In general, although many of the respon-

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dents considered a civil service reform to be both necessary and a good idea, they also considered the current reform to be heavily flawed, perceiving it as plagued by cumbersome procedures, unrealistic timeframes, and other downsides. As the following quote illustrates, the SERVIR reform was seen by many of our interviewees as something good in theory, but that either has not worked very well or has not worked at all in practice. Many interviewees pointed out that the initial proposal did awaken some enthusiasm but that since then the reform has made little progress. “SERVIR is a good project, it is a good design, a good proposal for the state, but it has evolved very little with respect to its original design or idea” (interviewee from MIDIS and MINAGRI). Some of the most common criticisms about the SERVIR reform are somewhat similar to those made with regard to the CAS hiring process. In a nutshell, our interviewees pointed out that the whole process is too complicated, takes too much time, and is not properly guided by the reforming agency. Thus, the individuals in charge of implementing the reform inside the ministries (the managers and the human resources offices) are often at a loss as to what to do and how to do it. Take for instance the following comments: “It’s frustrating because it takes a long time, there are many procedures and processes that go to the Ministry of Labor, return, you publish in SERVIR, you go back because it [the announcement] has to spend so many days on that website, and I don’t know if knowledge of these processes is widespread, if everyone knows that they can participate.” (Interviewee from MEF) “I think the application process and all that should be a little easier.” (Interviewee from MINAGRI)

Another common complaint refers to the most emblematic policy of SERVIR: the “corps of public managers,” created through Legislative Decree 1024. It is composed of highly qualified professionals, selected through a public, transparent, and meritocratic contest, who can be assigned to different public entities on demand. Public managers are covered by a special labor regime and are in a separate remunerative scale, which is financed both by SERVIR and by the state entity to which they are assigned. Some of our interviewees pointed out that SERVIR does not have enough public managers to cover demand in their sector. Others stated that the appointment of public managers had been met with resistance in some offices, and in other cases the public managers themselves were found wanting (some were even accused of

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corruption before completing the SERVIR evaluation process). For instance: “Some of them that were being investigated for acts of corruption had cleared the SERVIR hurdle, right? And you say, ‘What happened here?’” (interviewee from MINEDU). This last point leads to another problem: for those in charge of the hiring processes, it is very hard to get rid of a public manager who is deemed unfit, since these managers are granted a three-­year contract, subject to review at the end of the first year. For some of our respondents, this timeframe for review is too long: “The issue with the reform law is that the evaluation of managers is a year in, so I think they are very different times, too long for a first evaluation” (interviewee from MINEDU). Finally, some of the most interesting criticisms of SERVIR come from interviewees who were involved in the reform, either as part of the reforming body itself or as beneficiaries of the training conducted as part of it. For example, in the following quotation a technocrat sheds light on the difficulties faced by the SERVIR steering group in making decisions: “I went to the SERVIR board, more than half [of the time the board] was discussing where to assign this public manager who has fought with the regional president, with the minister, who they are sending back to us” (interviewee from MEF). They also mention that the full functions of SERVIR remained unclear, since it is known primarily as a result of the corps of public sector managers initiative, which, as we have mentioned, has itself faced a backlash. Moreover, the interviewees also pointed out that there was strong resistance to the reform from middle-­and even lower-­level employees, who associate SERVIR and the reform (in particular its evaluation component) with the massive civil service layoffs that took place in the 1990s. “You talk about evaluations and all the older people remember the Fujimori era and they transmit fear to everyone” (interviewee from MEF). In other words, they feared the reform and the possibility of being dismissed as a result of its implementation. In summary, the reform was questioned by public sector officials, who perceived it as excessively complicated and time-­consuming in a bureaucratic timeframe in which positions needed to be filled quickly. Even the crown jewel of the reform, the corps of public managers, has been heavily criticized, because its design does not allow proper oversight by the public sector entity to which the managers are assigned (due to the fixed three-­year contract), and because in some cases SERVIR has failed to either properly prepare the manager to deal with the more political side of public policy or has not thoroughly screened the applicant’s profiles, leading to acceptance into the corps of public managers of some individuals with dubious backgrounds.10

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CONCLUSION To some extent, Peru can be considered a case of a politicized but competent patronage-based civil service. During the 2000s, discretionary appointments became a tool that technocrats use to increase and reproduce their power, and programmatic technocrats dominated the Public Central Administration (PCA). Discretionary appointments helped, for example, to keep autonomous technocrats in charge of the Ministry of Economy and Finances (Dargent 2015), which was partly responsible for the country’s outstanding economic performance during the last decade. The civil service reform itself was initiated and pushed forward by Peruvian technocrats and their international allies; a group of technocrats, concerned about the lack of civil service career paths, opened a window of opportunity in 2008. They found a cabinet that was in favor of the reform and a minister (Mario Pasco, the Minister of Labor, an independent expert) who was willing to lead this political process (Ugarte 2011; Cortázar et al. 2014). Pasco formed a team of experienced technocrats, who designed a proposal of gradual reform. This team took advantage of the delegation of legislative power to the executive branch, intended originally to facilitate the Peru–United States Free Trade Agreement. The civil service reform was thus proposed as part of the measures needed to modernize and strengthen the state (Cortázar et al. 2014; Cortés and Prieto 2015). As a result of this process, the team managed to pass a legislative decree creating SERVIR and another creating the corps of public managers. This reform process shows that discretionary appointments can have unexpected effects on institution building. As Grindle (2012) contends, the inherent flexibility of patronage appointments can in fact be helpful for achieving different policy objectives. However, this new type of politicized state does not assure the strengthening of state capacity. Discretionary appointments of programmatic professionals facilitated the emergence of islands of efficiency in Peru, but one can still detect considerable variation in state autonomy and capacity across sectors (Dargent 2015). To be sure, technocratic power is not without its limitations. An important one, linked with this particular form of the politicized state, concerns its structural weakness. Policy outcomes depend entirely on the personal leadership style and decisions of the institutions’ heads. If heads (ministers) are rotated often (as tends to be the case in Peru), any policy initiative could become paralyzed or even reversed. This is because technocrats and senior bureaucrats do not have security of tenure and usually move out

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at the same time as the head of their network, especially because most appointments are based on personal trust. Thus, policy changes are rarely sustainable and are always at risk. This is accentuated by the fact that, generally speaking, technocrats do not have political allies (such as an institutionalized coalition) to defend their policies. This limitation has probably never been clearer than during the political crisis of 2016–2018, characterized by tensions and clashes between the executive and legislative branches, that culminated in President Kuczynski’s resignation. Kuczynski returned to the executive branch former technocrats who had been working in the private sector for a long time. During his short term in power, Kuczynski was the prototypical technocrat with an elitist profile, more concerned with orthodox macroeconomic policies than with resolving the tensions with the Fujimorista majority in congress; what is more, his cabinet abandoned anything that might have antagonized Fujimorismo so as to sustain the path of modernizing the economy (Vergara 2018). This weak executive branch combined with continuous personnel changes within its ministries led to greater instability than usual at the highest levels of the PCA. This phenomenon even affected the MEF, and the instability created a “coping with crisis” mode that slowed policymaking and implementation. Moreover, without a real (organized) political party or political coalitions, the executive branch was unable to stop congress from ousting two of its education ministers, one of whom was a renowned technocrat specializing in education policies. More importantly for the prospects of building more capable state institutions, our interviews also showed the difficulties faced in the implementation of the civil service reform, and its current stagnation. In short, the prospects of successfully implementing a new meritocratic civil service career path seem limited in Peru. And this is due, partly, to the vested interests that technocrats already have in safeguarding the basis of their power: discretionary appointments.

EPILOGUE Many things have gotten worse in our country’s political system since we wrote this chapter.11 Political crisis has become the norm. As we foresaw, Peru’s particular form of politicized state was structurally weak and contained the seeds of its own destruction. Amid the clash of powers of the last quinquennium and its consequent policy paralysis, the civil service reform remained stagnated until it received a great blow. Without political allies to defend them and their policies, technocrats were severely weakened when, on

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March 2021, congress passed Law 31131 (without the support of the executive branch). This law mandates the progressive incorporation of CAS regime positions into the old labor regimes (728 and 276), without requiring a public contest or any other sort of evaluation. In addition to this, the law also makes any CAS contract in place a permanent one and prohibits the hiring of new CAS personnel. In practice, this means the end of the civil service reform effort pushed by technocrats in 2008. But since this reform was in standby anyway, what this new law means is a blow to technocrats’ informal source of power: administering through informal means temporary hires, based primarily on personal networks of trust. The law was being contested at the constitutional court by a demand interposed by the executive branch under Francisco Sagasti’s administration, but the new administration (in particular, the newly nominated labor minister, Iber Maraví) decided to withdraw the demand on early September 2021, although is not clear whether he actually has the power to do so. Moreover, beyond this blow, the newly elected government also challenged the established mode of “programmatic technocrats” patronage of Peru’s national executive branch. The first cabinet and high-­level hires of Pedro Castillo’s government are currently being actively criticized for breaking the informal rule of designating mostly programmatic technocrats in positions of power. On the one hand, most of Castillo’s ministers lack a professional trajectory in their policy field and several have, in addition, questionable political backgrounds. On the other hand, Castillo and several of his ministers are openly hiring high-­level functionaries with overtly electoral motives, paying back favors to people or social organizations such as unions who help them campaigning or financing their campaign. Personal trust is still key for the designations, but with Castillo we are seeing an apparent strengthening of the importance of partisan trust for appointments. Thus, both legally and politically, the predominant mode of programmatic technocratic patronage we describe is currently being challenged. It remains to be seen if public and policy pressures will make Castillo hold back and return to the previous technocratic logic as the dominant form of patronage in Peru’s national state or if Peru will transition to a more mixed mode of patronage appointments.

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Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar Fowks, Jacqueline. 2016. “El candidato del partido de Humala se retira de las presidenciales.” El País, April 8. https:/­/­elpais.com/­internacional/­2016/­03/­14/­america/­1457911232 _699898.html. González-­Ocantos, Ezequiel, and Paula Muñoz. 2017. “Clientelism.” In The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology, edited by William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner, 750–67. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hicken, Allen. 2011. “Clientelism.” Annual Review of Political Science 14 (1): 289–310. Jones, Mark P. 2005. “The Role of Parties and Party Systems in the Policymaking Process.” Paper presented at the Workshop on State Reform, Public Policies, and Policymaking Processes, Washington DC, February 28–March 2. http:/­/­w ww6.iadb.org/­res/­publications /­pubfiles/­pubS-­310.pdf. Kopecký, Petr, Peter Mair, and Maria Spirova. 2012. Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levitsky, Steven. 2013. “Peru: The Challenges of a Democracy without Parties.” In Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America,  4th ed., edited by Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter, 282–315. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Levitsky, Steven, and Maxwell A. Cameron. 2003. “Democracy without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori’s Peru.” Latin American Politics and Society 45 (3): 1–33. Levitsky, Steven, and Mauricio Zavaleta. 2016. “Why No Party-­Building in Peru?” In Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Dominguez, 412–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott. 2018. Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauceri, Philip. 1995. “State Reform, Coalitions, and the Neoliberal Autogolpe in Peru.” Latin American Research Review 30 (1): 7–37. Meléndez, Carlos, and Paolo Sosa Villagarcia. 2013. “Perú 2012: ¿atrapados por la historia?” Revista Ciencia Política 33 (1): 325–50. Morgan, Jana. 2011. Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Muñoz, Paula. 2014. “An Informational Theory of Campaign Clientelism: The Case of Peru.” Comparative Politics 47 (1): 79–98. Muñoz, Paula. 2016. “Estado, clientelismo y partidos políticos. Una perspectiva comparada.” In Incertidumbres y distancias. El controvertido protagonismo del Estado en el Perú, edited by Romeo Grompone, 283–334. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Muñoz, Paula. 2018. Buying Audiences: Clientelism and Electoral Campaigns When Parties Are Weak. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru Muñoz, Paula. 2021. “Latin America Erupts: Peru Goes Populist.”  Journal of Democracy  32 (3): 48–62.  Muñoz, Paula, and Eduardo Dargent. 2016. “Patronage, Subnational Linkages, and Party-­ Building: The Cases of Colombia and Peru.” In Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America, edited by Steven Levitsky, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Dominguez, 187–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muñoz, Paula, and Yamilé Guibert. 2016. “Perú: El fin del optimismo.” Revista de Ciencia Política 36 (1): 313–38. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2015. “La política del patronazgo partidario en Argentina y Uruguay.” In V Congreso Uruguayo de Ciencia Política. ¿Qué ciencia política para qué democracia?, 7–10. Retrieved from http:/­/­aucip.org.uy/­w p-­content /­uploads/­AUCiP-­V-­Congreso-­P rograma-­final.pdf. Paredes, Maritza, and Daniel Encinas. 2020. “Perú 2019: crisis política y salida institucional.” Revista de Ciencia Politica 40 (2): 483–510. Sánchez, Omar. 2009. “Party Non-­systems: A Conceptual Innovation.” Party Politics 15 (4): 487–520. Seawright, Jason Woodland. 2006. Crisis of Representation: Voters, Party Organizations, and Party-­System Collapse in South America. Berkeley: University of California. Soifer, Hillel David. 2015. State Building in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stokes, Susan C. 2007. “Political Clientelism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, edited by Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, 604–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stokes, Susan C., Thad Dunning, Marcelo Nazareno, and Valeria Brusco. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tanaka, Martín. 2005. Democracia sin partidos, Perú, 2000–2005: los problemas de representación y las propuestas de reforma política. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Torcal, Mariano, ed. 2015. Sistemas de partidos en América Latina: causas y consecuencias de su equilibrio inestable. Santa Fe, Argentina: Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Ugarte, Mayen. 2011. “Los intentos de reforma del Servicio Civil en el Perú: de la práctica a la teoría.” Slides for presentation at conference titled “Desafíos y alternativas para mejorar el servicio civil en el Perú,” Lima, March 15. http:/­/­u smp.edu.pe/­idp/­w p-­content /­uploads/­2015/­11/­ugarte.pdf. Urrutia, Adriana. 2011. “Que la Fuerza (2011) esté con Keiko: El nuevo baile del fujimorismo. El fujimorismo, su organización y sus estrategias de campaña” In Post-­candidatos: Guía analítica de sobrevivencia hasta las próximas elecciones, edited by Carlos Meléndez, 91–120. Lima: MITIN. Vergara, Alberto. 2018. “Latin America’s Shifting Politics: Virtue, Fortune, and Failure in Peru.” Journal of Democracy 29 (4): 65–76.

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Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar Vergara, Alberto, and Daniel Encinas. 2016. “Continuity by Surprise: Explaining Institutional Stability in Contemporary Peru.” Latin American Research Review 51 (1): 159–80.  Vergara, Alberto, and Aaron Watanabe. 2019. “Presidents without Roots: Understanding the Peruvian Paradox.” Latin American Perspectives 46 (5): 25–43. Zavaleta, Mauricio. 2014. Coaliciones de independientes. Las reglas no escritas de la política electoral. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.

7 Patronage in a Party Government Political Appointments under the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, 2005–2015 Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio

T

he Uruguayan case stands out in Latin America due to the strength of the country’s democracy,1 and its high levels of good governance,2 transparency,3 and rule of law,4 as well as the relatively high standards of provision of public services. Uruguay also ranks relatively high in the region’s Civil Service Development Index (Cortázar, Lafuente, and Sanginés 2014). Thus, we aim for the findings of this study to interact with the usually normatively laden discussion of patronage, providing empirical evidence for a better understanding of the phenomenon in an unusual context for the region. We map the central administration’s political appointments during the first two Frente Amplio (FA; Broad Front) administrations of Tabaré Vázquez (2005– 2010) and José Mujica (2010–2015), measuring the scope of patronage and identifying patrons’ motivations for making appointments and the roles performed by appointees within the public administration. Following guidelines outlined by the editors, we estimate the scope of patronage at the top, middle, and low levels of four ministries. We then identify the roles carried out by appointees using the typology designed by Panizza, Peters, and Ramos (2019 and this volume). As elaborated in the introduction to this book, the typology combines the nature of trust between the patron and the appointee (partisan or not partisan) and the competence (technical or political) required from the appointees. The study draws information from a survey of experts and key

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informants, complemented by official statistics on public sector employment and the analysis of the legal provisions regulating the civil service. Several assumptions led us to the formulation of a number of hypotheses concerning the nature of patronage appointments in the country’s public administration: 1) Considering the constraints that legal regulations impose on recruitment practices in the public service and the expectation that political actors will abide by public service regulations given Uruguay’s relatively high good governance indicators, we do not expect to find a large number of political appointees. 2) Considering the country’s strongly institutionalized party system and a presidentialist regime with moderate powers, we expect that the ruling party will have significant power of appointment. 3) Taking into account the programmatic nature of the political system, we expect that most discretionary appointments were made taking into consideration the technical-­professional capacities of appointees to implement policies in line with the program of the ruling party. 4) Given that the FA, which was in power at the time of our study, is a broad coalition of highly institutionalized parties and factions, political support for policies requires intraparty negotiations and agreements between the executive branch and the party’s parliamentary caucus. Taking into account this political dynamic, we expect to find a significant number of political operators appointed for their negotiating skills.

We conclude that while there was a significant degree of politicization of the public administration, we did not find evidence of a significant colonization of the administrative machine by political appointees. We further conclude that the predominance of the roles of party professionals and political operators reflects the highly institutionalized and programmatic nature of the party system in Uruguay and the coalition-­like structure of the ruling FA. However, the fact that party professionals have a combination of technical and political skills does not mean that they were the best qualified persons to perform the task they were assigned within the public administration.

THE URUGUAYAN CASE In Uruguay, the executive branch is composed of thirteen ministries and the presidency. According to Article 149 of the constitution, the president

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exercises executive power in agreement with individual ministers or with the Council of Ministers, depending on the area of oversight.5 The number, denomination, and policy areas of ministries are set by law, which can only be the initiative of the executive branch. Ministers, who are appointed by the president and serve at her discretion, define the strategic and operational goals of their ministries and oversee policy implementation and, within certain areas, service provision. Exceptions to the latter are the areas of education, health, and social security, which are managed by decentralized agencies. The national or general directorates are the core units of the ministries. In turn, national directorates are divided into subunits called divisions, departments, and sections. The ministries’ financial and human resources management are strongly regulated by auditing agencies, some of which work under the executive branch, such as the Contaduría General de la Nación (General Accounting Agency), Auditoría Interna de la Nación (Internal Auditing Agency), the; Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil (ONSC; National Civil Service Office), and others that are external to it, such as the Tribunal de Cuentas (Court of Auditors) and the Tribunal de lo Contencioso Administrativo (Administrative Law Tribunal). For the purpose of this study, it is important to consider the role of the ONSC, an office that monitors and regulates the civil service and is tasked with advising the executive branch, public enterprises, and decentralized agencies on human resource policies. The office is under the umbrella of the presidency and enjoys functional autonomy and technical independence, granted by law since 1985 (Law 15.757). A succession of laws have widened and regulated the ONSC faculties among these, participation in collective bargaining (Law 18.172), supervising performance evaluation mechanisms (Law 18.172), advising on public sector remuneration policies with the aim of reducing inequalities (Law 18.172), creating and implementing a centralized recruitment system for the central administration (Law 18.719), creating a unified registry of labor regulations (Law 18.719), and managing an information system of central administration employees (Law 18.719). The norms regulating the civil service in the central administration are enshrined in Article 60 of the 1967 constitution. It guarantees the right of civil servants to tenure and a meritocratic system of entry and promotion. Among the different modalities of state employment, civil servants are the only employees with the right to an administrative career (with the rights described above). The rights of career civil servants are protected under the Estatuto de Funcionarios Públicos de la Administración Central (Statute of

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Central Administration Civil Servants), set up by the ONSC and enacted by Law 19.121 in 2013.6 The regulation and structure of the career system in the central administration is rigid. Under this system, career civil servants are classified in occupational tracks, subtracks, and grades that reflect the specialization and educational level of the employee, as well as the hierarchical level of the position. Entry to the administrative career must be at the lowest level of each track. Even though the 2013 statute permits cross-­t rack hiring, this is allowed only within a given ministry, and a change of track from one ministry to another requires entering at the lowest level of the new track. The highest rank within the administrative career is that of division director. Above the division directors are national directors and general directorates, which, according to law, are part of the track “Q” (cargos de confianza; positions of trust). Ministers appoint people from within or outside the civil service to track Q positions at their discretion, and can remove and replace them at will. At the end of the second FA administration the number of track Q positions was 164 in the whole central administration (Observatorio-­ONSC 2015). Ministers are also permitted to appoint adscriptos (special advisors), of which there were fewer than 100 in total in 2015.7 Thus, ministers have legal power to appoint only special advisors and track Q political appointees. By the end of the FA’s second administration, tenured career civil servants made up the majority (69.33 percent) of public sector employees—­not taking into account teachers, police, and military personnel, as they are employed under special legal regimes (Observatorio-­ONSC 2015)—­reflecting a process through which public sector workers under other modalities of employment had been switched to career civil service regimes. The trend to recruit tenure-­t rack civil servants and to switch other employees to the tenure track, and the politicians’ observance of the legal limitations for making discretional appointments, has restricted the scope for patronage. The creation of a centralized recruitment and human resources system—­dubbed the “single window”—­has reinforced this trend.8 This strong Weberian bureaucratic structure, reflected in both a relatively low number of political appointees and rigid meritocratic guidelines for entry, contrasts with the discretion that ministers enjoy to promote employees to higher hierarchical administrative positions (for example, to division director or departmental head), bypassing administrative career procedures. This faculty is exerted through so called encargaturas (provisional appointments). When making a provisional appointment, the minister promotes a trusted employee who is at a lower level in the ministry’s administrative hierarchy to the higher post for a fixed time. This practice shows that

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while the meritocratic recruitment system works properly, this is not the case with the promotions system. In this way the professional autonomy of career civil servants is undermined by the need to preserve chances of promotion. Particularly relevant features of the Uruguayan political system that affect the contours of patronage practices in the country are the strongly programmatic and institutionalized character of the party system (Kitschelt et al. 2010; Luna 2014; Buquet and Piñeiro 2016), the low autonomy of the president vis-­à-­v is political parties (Chasquetti 2004), and the characteristics of the FA as a governing party. The high level of institutionalization of the party system has been highlighted as a central feature of the country’s political system, in which parties are the dominant actors of the political scene (Caetano, Pérez, and Rilla 1987; Caetano 2007). Electoral rules have traditionally favored autonomous and structured party factions with powerful leaders (Lanzaro 2001; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Jones 2005). After twelve years of dictatorship the traditional bipartite system was replaced by a moderate multiparty system, which has proved to be stable. Stability, however, does not imply rigidity. Rather, the system has shown a capacity for adaptation in times of change (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Jones 2005; Buquet 2015). Although the rise of the FA (founded in 1971) drastically changed the former bipartisan landscape, the party was assimilated by the system without major traumas. Parties compete within a stable institutional framework based on programmatic agendas (Kitschelt et al. 2010). In line with Geddes (1994), O’Dwyer (2006), and Gryzmala-­Busse (2007) it is reasonable to expect that in the context of an institutionalized and programmatic party system with high levels of competition the governments of the FA did not engage in mass clientelism. Buquet and Piñeiro’s (2016) argument that the transition to a programmatic party system came in parallel with the abandonment of the old mass patronage system supports this hypothesis. The systemic attributes of Uruguayan parties are strengthened by the moderate powers of the president, who, according to Shugart and Carey (1992), is a relevant actor in the dynamics of patronage. The concept of presidential powers includes legislative, institutional, and party dimensions that determine the capacity of presidents to impose their political agendas (Payne 2006). Uruguayan presidents are not particularly powerful compared to others in the region, considering that their legislative and party powers are moderate (0.39 for Vázquez and 0.38 for Mujica on a scale of 0 to 1; Payne 2006). Garcé and Yaffé (2014) point out that Uruguay is ruled by parties and not

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by people, referring to the ways that the centrality of the parties, the electoral legislation, and the structure of the party system and party discipline limit the power of presidents. The power of institutions over political leaders and officeholders is also highlighted by Chasquetti (2004), who notes that political parties in Uruguay have not had a leader with the capacity to impose her will over the leaders of the party’s factions. Leaders of the numerous factions that make up the FA control fundamental political resources, including electoral nominations, leading party factions to behave as members of flexible coalitions (Garcé and Yaffé 2014). Consequently, due to moderate powers and intraparty fragmentation, presidential leadership is limited by the need to reach intraparty agreements that reflect the factions’ distribution of legislative seats. Between 2005 and 2015 the two FA administrations enjoyed absolute legislative majorities. This allowed the FA to pass legislation, ratify presidential vetoes, and appoint government officials (Lanzaro 2014). The FA administrations can thus be characterized as “majoritarian presidentialisms,” in which governability depended exclusively on intraparty agreements and in the capacity of the president to secure the support of the party’s legislators. (Garcé and Yaffé 2014). Given the institutionalized nature of party factions, coalition bargaining was transferred from parliament to within the ruling party (Chasquetti, Buquet, and Cardarello 2013). Drawing on the literature on coalitions theory and party behavior (Müller and Strøm 1999; Strøm 1990; Ennser-­Jedenastik 2014), the FA’s governments can be characterized as “coalition governments” (Chasquetti, Buquet, and Cardarello 2013). Thus, FA’s presidents mirrored strategies of interparty coalition building (Amorim Neto 1998) by awarding cabinet posts based on the legislative weight of the ruling party’s internal factions (Chasquetti, Buquet, and Cardarello 2013). Presidents Vázquez and Mujica both included representatives of the FA factions in their cabinets to secure parliamentary support for their policy agendas. However, they differed in the method of allocating positions within the executive. Following the typology proposed by Rehren (1992), we find that while Vázquez implemented a “vertical” integration, Mujica implemented a “horizontal” one, by appointing vice ministers of his own faction (Movimiento de Participación Popular; MPP) or people he personally trusted, as a political counterbalance to ministers who were either politically independent or from other FA factions. In this way, Vázquez, as a “leader above factions,” prioritized government cohesion, allowing party factions to control the ministries under their command (Garcé and Yaffé 2014, 193). Conversely, Mujica,

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who was the leader of one of the factions (the MPP), aimed to limit the influence of individual factions (Chasquetti, Buquet, and Cardarello 2013). The FA’s governance strategy that placed the party and its programmatic commitments at the center of government is a typical feature of a “party government” (Rose 1969; Katz 1986). Among the criteria that define the concept, we find: (1) party nominees occupy “important positions in a regime,” which has the consequence of permitting “partisans to participate in the making of a wide range of policies”; (2) public policies are decided within the governing party, and public officials are recruited by the party; (3) public officials act in cohesive manner to implement public policies and remain accountable to the party (Rose 1969, 416). Within this strongly institutionalized and programmatic party government, we expect that policy areas associated to partisan trust will be highly valued by executive officeholders when making patronage appointments. In this regard, we expect to find appointments that combine partisan trust with technical competence to guarantee the implementation of the party’s programmatic proposals,9 and to find appointees with political skills that allow them to move fluidly within complex intraparty networks.

MAPPING PATRONAGE APPOINTMENTS To analyze the politics of patronage appointments under the FA we use information from a survey of experts and key informants and official data from the ONSC. We choose the core of the government (ministries) as our area of study to differentiate from previous works, which focused on subnational governments. In the latter, political appointments are typically clientelist, which means that other modalities of patronages have not been properly identified by researchers. The four ministries we selected cover the three main policy arenas identified by Rose’s (1976) classification of modern state functions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA; Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores) and the Ministry of Economy and Finances (MEF; Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas) represent classic “nineteenth-­century” ministries, that perform activities considered essential to the existence of the state. The Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries (MoLAF, Ministerio de Ganaderia, Agricultura y Pesca) is a more modern institution mobilizing physical resources, which Rose would classify as pertaining to the second stage of development, in which states are preoccupied with expanding their activities beyond essential activities toward economic development (such as infrastructure investment or production of goods). Lastly, the Ministry of Social Development

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(MSD; Ministerio de Desarrollo Social) was created by the FA in 2005 and carries out activities of social welfare. With this selection, we aim for a representative sample of patronage practices across different policy fields within the government’s core. Since we investigate formal and informal practices (Helmke and Levitsky 2006) for this study, we drew on perceptions from experts and key informants that have an insight on the working of both formal and informal practices within their areas of expertise (Kopecký, Scherlis, and Spirova 2008). We chose informants by using purposive sampling to ensure a wide range of perspectives on the subject. We selected experts and key informants considering their knowledge of different policy arenas and of the internal dynamics of the public administration. They included academics, civil servants, ministers, and former ministers, party leaders, trade unionists, legislators, and political appointees. To conduct the survey we carried out forty-­two semistructured face-­to-­face interviews between 2015 and 2016. We analyzed responses using descriptive quantitative techniques to study perceptions about patronage appointments within three analytic dimensions: scope, origin of trust, and the appointee’s skills and roles.10 The scope of this study comprises estimates of the proportion of positions within the central administration that were politically appointed at three levels of the ministry: top (the first layer of the administrative hierarchy; that is, national directors and general directors, and their advisory staff), middle (middle management such as division directors, department chiefs, or similar), and low (nonhierarchical staff, such as administrative, technical, and service personnel). We studied the scope of patronage by analyzing the evolution of employment in the public sector. Within that total, we established the proportion of state employees that were not tenured career civil servants, since having a large number of noncareer civil servants may be a mechanism for setting up a parallel administration and thus a proxy for politicization (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018). In line with our expectations, we did not find a large number of patronage appointments. Both official personnel data and experts and key informants’ responses substantiate our findings. In the central administration, the number of public employees rose moderately, from 55,430 in 2005 to 57,574 in 2015 (Observatorio-­ONSC 2016).11 Of these totals, 6,555 were under temporary contracts in 2005 with numbers decreasing to 4,063 in 2015. The decrease was a consequence of the government policy of converting temporary positions into career-­t rack jobs. The tendency toward stability in the number of public employees can be

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Figure 7.1 Number of permanent civil servants and nonpermanent civil servants in central administration (2005–2015). Source: Created with data obtained from National Civil Service Office (Observatorio-­ONSC 2016) observed in the four ministries under study, showing a slight decrease from 7,525 in 2005 to 7,405 in 2015 (fig. 7.2). The number of non-­public-­sector employees—­a heterogeneous category that includes, among others, interns, service contractors, employees working under contract from international organizations, and short-­term and fixed-­term contracts—­however, increased significantly from 4.75 percent of the workforce (376) to 21.8 percent (2074) by the end of the period under study (fig. 7.2). This rise can be explained almost entirely by hiring practices in the MSD, which in 2015 recorded 1,555 so-­called non-­public-­sector employees (Observatorio-­ONSC 2016). These were people working from nongovernmental organizations contracted out by the ministry to implement social policies within communities. Our interviewees agreed that at the top-­level of the administrative hierarchy, appointments were entirely political, which is hardly surprising due to the discretionary nature of appointments at this level. At the middle level, in which meritocracy should be the norm, 74 percent of our interviewees perceived a strong incidence of patronage practices: they estimated that between 50 percent and 80 percent of positions at this level were filled on a discretionary basis. These appointments were made under the aforementioned mechanism of encargaturas, meaning that appointees were usually civil servants already working for the ministry who had been promoted to a higher position on an acting basis. At the lower level of the administrative hierarchy

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Figure 7.2 Number of permanent civil servants and nonpermanent civil servants in the ministries under study (2005–2015). Source: Created with data obtained from National Civil Service Office (Observatorio-­ONSC 2016) 95.6 percent of interviewees claimed that patronage practices were either “insignificant” or “nonexistent,” with 60 percent of the of interviewees considering that patronage was nonexistent. The limited scope of patronage appointments was in line with the Uruguayan civil service as a system in which meritocratic practices coexist with some levels of politicization, especially at top and middle levels. While employment laws are generally observed (Cortázar, Lafuente, and Sanginés 2014), politicization occurs legally at the top level, and through loopholes in the meritocratic system of promotions at middle levels. Encargaturas are legal and involve ministerial public employees, yet they are used by patrons to get around meritocratic principles for promotions. In Uruguay, presidents, ministers, the ruling party and its party factions were the main players in the game of political appointments. The centrality of party factions in the process of appointment was highlighted by 75 percent of interviewees, 65 percent of whom claimed that the president and his ministers made appointments in consultation with the ruling party or party factions, while a further 10 percent considered that party factions had sole power of appointment. In contrast, only 25 percent claimed that the president and his ministers appointed without consulting party factions (fig. 7.3). The direct or indirect influence of the ruling party and party factions in the process of appointments was higher in the MSD and the MoLAF than in MoFA and MEF. Of our interviewees, 33 percent said that officeholders in the MFA and MEF appointed without consulting the party or party factions (fig. 7.3). In contrast, only 22 percent of interviewees in the MSD, and 20 percent in the MoLAF considered that officeholders appointed without consulting the

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Figure 7.3 Origin of appointment by ministry, percentage of responses. Source: Survey of experts and key informants party or party factions (fig. 7.3). A case in point was the MoLAF, which was a politically important ministry for the MPP (the largest party faction of the FA). The political weight of the MPP was key in the appointment process for positions in this ministry. As the 2005–2010 vice minister of MoLAF highlighted: “We have been preparing for a long time to take charge of agricultural policy, This is why we have been selecting our cadres and scouting our networks to recruit specialists who could occupy roles of responsibility within the ministry. A clear example of this was the coordination of the ‘livestock traceability program,’ for which we had in our ranks the only specialist in the country” (interview 12).12 Given the importance of party trust in the process of appointment, it is safe to conclude that the origin of trust in Uruguay was predominantly partisan. This finding is similar to those in countries that have strongly institutionalized party systems, such as Brazil and Chile. In the Brazilian case, under Luiz Inácio da Silva (Lula; 2002–2009) and Dilma Rousseff (2010– 2016) patronage was used as a mechanism to ensure coalitional support for the presidency (Garcia Lopez 2015). In Chile, studies of the presidencies of Michelle Bachelet (2006–2009) and Sebastián Piñera (2010–2013) have reached similar conclusions (Moya 2017). In contrast, personal trust prevails in countries with weak or collapsed party institutions. For example, Scherlis (2013) and Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis’s (2018) studies of Kirchnerista presidencies in Argentina show how in a hyperpresidentialist personalist regime, the power of political designations tends to be located at the top of the executive hierarchy. In collapsed Andean party systems, patronage practices are summed up by the title of Baraybar and Muñoz’s (2017) work: “patronage without parties.”

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Figure 7.4. Percentage frequency of appointee competences for each ministry. Source: Survey of experts and key informants. Our interviews indicate that the technical capacity for policy design and implementation was the main skill sought by patrons when making discretionary appointments. The capacity for political articulation, and for controlling the bureaucracy, were also considered important skills: 75.2 percent of respondents considered that technical know-­how and experience in policymaking were the main skills sought after by appointers, and 67.3 percent claimed that the ability to control the bureaucratic machine was the second most important capability (fig. 7.4). Lastly, 22.7 percent of interviewees considered that appointments were made to reward party factions, and 19.9 percent believed that appointments were related to political brokerage (fig. 7.4). Brokerage was regarded by interviewees as particularly relevant in the MSD, in which it was considered a key motivation by 44.4 percent of the interviewees (fig. 7.4). However, as elaborated below, in-­depth interviews strongly suggest that the category of brokers ill fits the roles played by these appointees. What roles do political appointees play in the central administration? According to the survey, a majority of appointees were chosen because they possessed a combination of technical capacity and party trust, thus placing them as party professionals in the typology of roles outlined in the introduction,. The predominance of party professionals confirms our hypothesis that in a programmatic party system, the combination of partisan trust and technical expertise is essential for the role performed by appointees in the policymaking process. As a party faction leader and top-­level manager at the MSD told us: “In our political force, the mix of technical experience and political trust is highly valuable, especially at the highest echelons of the ministerial administration, where it is highly unlikely that someone with no technical experience will be chosen. However, it is political trust, especially within party factions, that ensures that you have continuity in a position, and provides a

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more solid backing when it comes to implementing policy. It’s very rough to be out in the cold” (interview 26).13 The second most important competence highlighted by interviewees was the ability to negotiate with political actors and articulate political support to overcome potential policy vetoes. In this category political competence was combined with partisan trust, which corresponds to the role of political operators, as defined in the typology. This finding confirms our assumption that political articulation and negotiating abilities are highly necessary in a consociationalist and pluralist political system, and most particularly in the FA, which is a highly factionalized party government effectively functioning as a coalition. However, we would like to note that the role of political operator was fulfilled in certain ministries by high-­level party professionals. For example, this was the case in the MEF during the 2005–2010 period, in which technically qualified party professionals also performed the role of political operators (interview 32).14 The third most prevalent role of political appointees was that of commissars, who, according to the typology, combined partisan trust with political skills to control the bureaucracy. The appointment of a relatively large number of commissars can be partly explained by the fact that the FA came into government for the first time in 2005 as a center-­left bloc with a deep distrust of the state bureaucracy they perceived as loyal to the country’s traditional parties (Panizza 2012). Depending on the commissar’s style of leadership and the technical competence of bureaucrats, this role was carried out in a more or less confrontational way. A mid-­level official at the MoLAF told us: “The biggest problem for us is when they appoint top-­ranks who do not have technical know-­how, which fortunately is not often. Sometimes it happens, and those individuals dedicate themselves to controlling us and limiting our autonomy. This complicates the possibility of good management, and also generates a hostile work environment. The strategy available to us as technical personnel is to either challenge the appointee through the appropriate channels or to strictly work on those tasks that are authorized” (interview 19).15 Lastly, while a large majority (75 percent) of interviewees claimed that political activists were not active at all in the public administration, a minority (22 percent) detected the presence of political activists. According to the introduction’s typology of roles, appointees performing this role are typically found at the lower levels of public administration and perform no distinct role in it. Rather, their main role is to campaign for the ruling party or to act as claques for the party in political rallies.

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CONCLUSIONS The results of our research allow us to draw a number of conclusions regarding the political nature of patronage practices in Uruguay, and contribute to the debate on the importance of taking into account modalities of patronage appointments other than those linked to electoral clientelism. The research also paves the way for advancements in the theoretical literature on the relationship between patronage practices, party systems, and types of presidentialism. Our first conclusion is that while the scope of patronage in Uruguay confirms the common notion of politicized public administrations in Latin America, we did not find a mass colonization of the administrative machine by political appointees. We also did not find that patronage appointments corresponded to the popular clientelist exchange of “jobs for the boys” (Grindle 2012). These findings challenge the dominant literature on the subject, which associates political appointments with clientelism. Second, the predominance of the roles of party professionals and political operators reflects the highly institutionalized and programmatic nature of the party system in Uruguay and the coalition-­like structure of the ruling FA. However, the fact that party professionals possessed a combination of technical and political skills does not mean that they were the best-­qualified people to perform the task they were assigned within the public administration. The fact that political appointees played a major role in the design and implementation of public policy at the top and middle levels of the administration can be considered an institutional weakness in the country. The significant presence of political appointments at the middle level of the administration reveals an excessive dominance of policy responsiveness over competent neutrality. Thirdly, the strong presence of political operators evidences that patronage appointments were an expression of the permanent negotiations between the executive branch, the ruling party, and party factions. It also highlights the practice of consensus-­building characteristic of Uruguayan politics. Finally, this investigation opens possibilities for dialogue between political science and the study of public administration. As a case study, it links patronage practices in the central administration to institutional characteristics of the Uruguayan political system. Other investigations at the regional level (some of which are part of this volume), explore the relationship between

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patronage practices and party systems, adding resources for further comparative studies in the field of presidentialism and party systems. Future research should also aim to study the relation between modalities of patronage and variations in the quality of public policies in different areas of government.

REFERENCES Altman, David. 2018. Citizenship and Contemporary Direct Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Amorim Neto, Octavio. 1998. “Cabinet Formation in Presidential Regimes: An Analysis of 10 Latin American Countries.” Paper presented at the 21st International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, September 24–26. Baraybar, Karla, and Paula Muñoz. 2017. “Patronage without Parties?” Paper presented at the workshop Patronage in Transition: A Comparative Analysis of Patronage Practices in Latin America, Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, May 2–3. Buquet, Daniel. 2015. “El cambio político en el Cono Sur: institucionalización partidaria y alternancia en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay.” In Sistemas de partidos en América Latina: causas y consecuencias de su equilibrio inestable, edited by Mariano Torcal, 139–60. Barcelona: Anthropos. Buquet, Daniel, and Rafael Piñeiro. 2016. “The Quest for Good Governance: Uruguay’s Shift from Clientelism.” Journal of Democracy 27 (1): 139–51. Caetano, Gerardo. 2007. “Del triunfo electoral a los desafíos del gobierno. El primer tramo del gobierno del Frente Amplio (2004–2006).” In Elecciones presidenciales y giro político en América Latina, edited by Isidoro Cheresky, 97–131. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Caetano, Gerardo, Romeo Antón Pérez, and José Rilla. 1987. “La Partidocracia Uruguaya.” Cuadernos del CLAEH 12 (44):37–61. Chasquetti, Daniel. 2004. “Presidente fuerte, partido fragmentado y disciplina legislativa en Uruguay: los desafíos institucionales del gobierno del Frente Amplio.” Iberoamericana 34 (1): 43–63. Chasquetti, Daniel. 2013. “Cabinets and Legislative Cartels in Uruguay: Examining the Legislative Consequences of Government Formation.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 5 (1): 67–94. Chasquetti, Daniel, Daniel Buquet, and Antonio Cardarello. 2013. “La designación de gabinetes en Uruguay: estrategia legislativa, jerarquía de los ministerios y afiliación partidaria de los ministros.” América Latina Hoy 64: 15–40. Cortázar Velarde, Juan Carlos, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés. 2014. Serving Citizens: A Decade of Civil Service Reforms in Latin America (2004–13). Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank.

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Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). 2018. “Democracy Index 2018: Me Too? Political Participation, Protest and Democracy.” Accessed April 30, 2022. https:/­ /­ w ww.eiu.com /­topic/­democracy-­index. Ennser-­Jedenastik, Laurenz. 2014. “The Politics of Patronage and Coalition: How Parties Allocate Managerial Positions in State-­O wned Enterprises.” Political Studies 62 (2): 398–417. Garcé, Adolfo, and Jaime Yaffé. 2014. La era progresista: hacia un nuevo modelo de desarrollo: tercer acto. Montevideo: Fin de Siglo. García Lopez, Félix. 2015. Cargos de confiança no presidencialismo de coalizão brasileiro. Brasilia: IPEA. Geddes, Barbara. 1994. Politician’s Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grzymala-­Busse, Ann. 2007. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-­communist Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky. 2006. Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jones, Mark. 2005. “The Role of Parties and Party Systems in the Policymaking Process.” Paper presented at workshop on State Reform, Public Policies, and Policymaking Processes, Inter-­American Development Bank, Washington, DC, February 28–March 2. Katz, Richard. 1986. “Party Government: A Rationalistic Conception.” In Visions and Realities of Party Government, edited by Francis G. Castles and Rudolf Wildenmann. Berlin: de Gruyter. Kitschelt, Herbert, Kirk A. Hawkins, Juan Pablo Luna, Guillermo Rosas, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2010. Latin American Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kopecký, Petr, Gerardo Scherlis, and Maria Spirova. 2008. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Party Patronage.” Working paper, Committee on Concepts and Methods, Series 25, Leiden University. Lanzaro, Jorge. 2001. “Uruguay: las alternativas de un presidencialismo pluralista.” In Tipos de presidencialismo y modos de gobierno en América Latina, edited by Jorge Lanzaro, 15–40. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Lanzaro, Jorge. 2014. “Uruguay’s Social Democratic Experiment.” Current History 113 (760): 76–81. Luna, Juan Pablo. 2014. Segmented Representation: Political Party Strategies in Unequal Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy R. Scully. 1995. “Party Systems in Latin America.” In Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, 1–35. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Patronage in a Party Government Moya, Emilio. 2017. “La designación de cargos públicos en Chile. Un patronazgo en redefinición.” Paper presented at the workshop Patronage in Transition: A Comparative Analysis of Patronage Practices in Latin America, Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, May 2–3. Müller, Wolfgang C., and Kaare Strøm. 1999. Policy, Office, or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ONSC (Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil). 2015. Vínculos laborales con Observatorio-­ el Estado 2014: Art. 14 Ley no. 18.719. https:/­/­w ww.gub.uy/­oficina-­nacional-­servicio -­civil/­sites/­oficina-­nacional-­servicio-­civil/­files/­documentos/­publicaciones/­Informe_v%C3 %ADnculos_y_altas_y_bajas_completo_2014_072015.pdf. Observatorio-­ONSC (Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil). 2016. Vínculos laborales con el Estado 2015: Art. 14 Ley no. 18.719. http:/­/­w ww.onsc.gub.uy/­onsc1/­index.php?option=com _content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=70. Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil. 2020. “Informe de Adscriptos.” Accessed April 30, 2022. https:/­/­w ww.gub.uy/­oficina-­nacional-­servicio-­c ivil/­comunicacion/­publicaciones /­informe-­adscriptos-­2015. O’Dwyer, Conor. 2006. Runaway State-­Building: Patronage Politics and Democratic Development. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Panizza, Francisco. 2012. “Left Wing Governments and Public Administration Reform: The Case of the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, 2005–2011.” 22nd World Congress of Political Science, Madrid, July. Panizza, Francisco, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu. 2019. “Roles, Trust and Skills: A Typology of Patronage Appointments.” Public Administration 97 (1): 147–61. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos Larraburu, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. “Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina and Uruguay’s Central Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Payne, Mark. 2006. “El equilibrio de poder entre el Ejecutivo y el Legislativo: Papel de la Constitución y los partidos políticos.” In La Política Importa: Democracia y desarrollo en América Latina, edited by J. Mark Payne, Daniel Zovatto G., and Mercedes Mateo Díaz, 91–128. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank and Instituto Internacional para la Democracia y la Asistencia Electoral. Rehren, Alfredo. 1992. “Liderazgo presidencial y democratización en el Cono Sur de América Latina.” Revista de Ciencia Política 14 (1): 63–87. Rose, Richard. 1969. “The Variability of Party Government: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique.” Political Studies 17 (4): 413–45. Rose, Richard. 1976. “On the Priorities of Government: A Developmental Analysis of Public Policies.” European Journal of Political Research 4 (3): 247–89. Scherlis, Gerardo. 2013. “The Contours of Party Patronage in Argentina.” Latin American Research Review 48 (3): 63–84.

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Conrado Ramos Larraburu, Mauro Casa González, and Tamara Samudio Shugart, Matthew Soberg, and John Carey. 1992. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Transparency International. n.d. “Corruption Perceptions Index: 2015.” Accessed April 30, 2022. https:/­/­w ww.transparency.org/­en/­c pi/­2015. Transparency International. n.d. “Our Work In: Uruguay.” Accessed April 30, 2022. https:/­/­ www.transparency.org/­en/­countries/­uruguay. Strøm, Kaare. 1990. “A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 34 (2): 565–98. World Bank. n.d. “Worldwide Governance Indicators.” Accessed April 30, 2022. http:/­/­info .worldbank.org/­governance/­wgi/­index.aspx#reports. World Justice Project. n.d. “World Justice Project Rule of Law Index.” Accessed April 30, 2022. https:/­/­worldjusticeproject.org/­our-­work/­research-­and-­data/­w jp-­r ule-­law-­index-­2021.

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T

he contributors to this book have sought to answer a number of key questions about patronage appointments in Latin America’s central public administrations (CPAs): What is the scope of patronage appointments in the CPAs of the countries of the region? Which political actors have real power of appointment? What is the nature of the relation of trust between patrons and appointees? What are the political actors’ motivations when making discretionary appointments, what skills do patrons prioritize in appointees, and what roles do appointees play within the public administration? And, what explains variations in the scope and nature of patronage appointments? In answering these questions we have sought to better understand the relations between patronage, political parties, officeholders, and the public administration.

MAIN FINDINGS All of the countries covered by the studies here registered significant levels of patronage appointments, as defined in the introduction to this book. However, we did not find evidence of mass clientelism in the CPAs. Patronage appointments were particularly high at the top and mid-­levels of the administrative hierarchy and less so at lower levels. At the very top level, all or nearly all appointments were discretionary, as positions at this level are typically considered “positions of trust” (cargos de confianza) to which officeholders

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can legally appoint and fire people at will. There was more variance in scope further down the managerial ladder but in most countries respondents to the survey who were used as sources of evidence for this book considered that “a significant number” or “nearly all” appointments at upper-­middle and mid-­ level management were also discretionary, even in administrations in which these jobs were supposed to be filled following formal rules of promotion or open competition. There may be a number of reasons for relatively low number of patronage appointments down the administrative hierarchy (typically supervisory, clerical, and service jobs). In some countries, such as Mexico, lower administrative and service jobs are effectively controlled by the unions and protected by tenure. But even in countries in which lower-­level appointments were largely discretionary, as a general rule ministers were not routinely involved in the appointments, as they did not regard positions at these levels as particularly relevant to their ministerial work or political interests. Moreover, while these jobs can be used to reward grassroots political brokers, brokerage may be more dominant at provincial and municipal level (Stokes et al. 2013). Appointments at lower levels were subject to a variety of formal and informal recruitment processes. In a number of countries they were made by mid-­level public sector managers using informal criteria for recruitment, such as the recommendation of family members from public sector workers under their supervision.

POWER OF APPOINTMENT Our research sought to establish who had real power of appointment, as distinct from legal power. In the majority of the CPAs covered by the studies in this book, the real power of appointment lies with executive officeholders (normally the president and ministers or deputy ministers). All the countries covered in this volume are presidentialist regimes, and, as Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto put it in relation to Brazil—­though it also applies to other countries covered by this study—­the president is the highest-­level patron. Presidents exercised power of appointment either directly or by being consulted by ministers, but the scope and modalities of the presidents’ involvement in the appointment process varied from country to country. Moreover, presidents faced a number of practical and political restrictions that limited their direct involvement in patronage appointments. Rather than being involved in wholesale appointments, presidents used their power of appointment selectively and strategically to control key areas of the administration or to further political support and delegated most appointments to ministers, while main-

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taining veto power over appointments made by ministers and other political actors. The president’s use of his or her power of appointment was typically stronger at the top of the public administration’s hierarchy but diminished substantially at middle and lower levels. Presidents exercised their power of appointment more significantly in Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, and Argentina than in Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay. The president’s power of appointment was especially strong in Ecuador, where almost half of the informants stated that President Rafael Correa made appointments on his own and a further 40 percent stated that ministers consulted the president when making high-­level appointments. Moreover, the personalistic nature of Correa’s presidency and the control he hold over the ruling party, Alianza PAIS, made difficult to differentiate the president from the party. As an interviewee put it: “Correa was the party” (Sandoval, this volume). Presidents also exercised significant power of appointment in Chile, a trend that has intensified since the first administration of president Michelle Bachelet in 2006–2010 (Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume). In Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto was usually consulted by the secretaries of state when they made appointments at the top levels of the administrative hierarchy. In Argentina, the low degree of autonomy of the ruling Propuesta Republicana (PRO) party vis-­à-­v is president Mauricio Macri, and, more generally, the executive branch’s control over the governmental coalition, gave the president ample room for making discretionary appointments. In Brazil, presidential control over high-­level appointments was usually delegated to the president’s chief of staff. While the chief of staff signed the highest-­level appointments, reforms passed by President Jair Bolsonaro in 2019 gave more autonomy to ministers for nominations below that level. Candidates for high-­level appointments were often selected by the executive secretary of the ministry in question that in turn delegated to the holders of these positions appointments at lower levels of the managerial hierarchy. Yet the president still retains the power to make appointments and dismissal of high-­level managers at any time (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­ Neto, this volume). Parties generally exercised limited power of appointment. The parties’ rather low influence over patronage appointments was in line with a region in which parties have low levels of organization, weak roots in society, a limited number of party cadres, and low levels of institutionalization (Mainwaring and Scully 1995, Mainwaring 2018). However, there were some variations across countries. An extreme case was Peru, a country in which parties are typically empty shells for presidential candidates, have no permanent

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cadres or internal organization, and show short lifespans (Levitsky 2018). In contrast, in Uruguay, officeholders’ consultation with the ruling party at the time, the Frente Amplio, was the norm, reflecting the highly institutionalized nature of the country’s party system (Kitschelt et al. 2010; Panizza, Ramos Larraburu, and Scherlis 2018; Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio, this volume). Political parties also had power of appointment in Chile, a country that together with Uruguay had comparatively high levels of party institutionalization (Mainwaring 2018). However, in Chile parties have been losing power of appointment in favor of the president since the country’s return to democracy, as the political system has become more personalistic and governance more technocratic. In Mexico, the ruling party at the time of the survey, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), historically controlled appointments and colonized the state, but the party has lost centrality since the country’s democratization in the 2000s. However, the PRI still retained some limited power of appointment in the administration of President Peña Nieto, 2012–2018 Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume). In Argentina, parties that were part of the ruling multiparty governmental coalition Cambiemos, under the administration of President Macri (2015–2019), exercised limited power of appointment in the ministries under their control (Llano, this volume) In Brazil, parties and individual congressmen exercised influence by submitting candidates’ names to ministers or to the chief of staff of the presidency to be appointed in exchange for congressional support (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, this volume). Social movements, think tanks, and interest groups, such as business organizations and trade unions, had little direct power of appointment, although in some countries nonstate actors indirectly influenced appointments or provided pools of candidates for discretionary appointments. In some countries, social actors influenced appointments indirectly by being consulted by ministers when those ministers were making appointments in areas of activity related to their interests, social influence, or professional expertise. This was historically the case in Ecuador, where traditionally farmers’ associations influenced appointments in the Ministry of Agriculture and doctors and health workers’ associations influenced appointments in the Ministry of Health, although their influenced waned under President Correa. However, during Correa’s presidency, the Ministry of Social Inclusion opened political quotas for guilds of afro-­Ecuadorians, indigenous women, and LBGT groups (Sandoval, this volume). In Brazil, representatives of interest groups and/­or regional groups that were well represented in congress also acted as informal

Conclusion

patrons depending on the level of their political influence (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, this volume). In Mexico, social actors exercised some limited influence in patronage appointments. Among the actors that had more weight in the appointment process were business organizations (particularly in the tourism sector), family networks, nongovernmental organizations, and trade unions (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume). In other countries think tanks and technocratic networks were particularly influential in providing pools of candidates for technoprofessional appointments. Technocratic networks were particularly strong in Peru, where technocrats often held ministerial positions and rotated among areas of the administration. For example, many technocrats moved from the Ministry of Economy to the Ministry of Social Development to the Ministry of Education, and so on. Technocratic networks controlled the higher echelons of the public administration and were often delegated power of appointment by ministers (Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume). In Chile, the power of appointment of technocratic networks was more indirect, as governments drew personnel from think tanks aligned with the government’s policy preferences (Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume). And in Mexico academic networks from top private universities were regarded as relevant actors in the appointment process (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume).

TRUST Trust is of the essence of patronage everywhere but is particularly important in Latin America, where, as a rule, officeholders have little trust in civil servants’ political neutrality and technical capacity. As outlined in the introduction, we consider the distinction between partisan and nonpartisan trust as an indicator of the parties’ organizational strength and political influence. In the majority of countries covered by our study most appointments were based on “nonpartisan” (mainly personal) trust. However, partisan trust played a significant role in patronage appointments in Uruguay and to a lesser extent in Chile, two of the countries with the more institutionalized party systems (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio; Moya Díaz and Garrido, both this volume). Trust, however, can shift from the nonpartisan to the partisan, as appointees may join the public administration on a relation of nonpartisan trust with officeholders but become organically linked to the ruling party during the course of their appointment. Ecuador was a case in point, as to be politically aligned with the government was regarded as a requirement for pro-

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motion and even for keeping the job (Sandoval, this volume). A similar trajectory was evident in Argentina under the Kirchners (Panizza, Ramos, and Scherlis 2018). In Brazil, where civil servants promotion to high managerial positions is at the discretion of officeholders, some civil servants affiliated to the president’s or a minister’s party to increase their chances of promotion (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, this volume). In Mexico, during the years of hegemony of the PRI, partisan and nonpartisan trust were largely superimposed, as appointees had links to the ruling PRI party and also belonged to politicobureaucratic networks (known as camarillas) built on the basis of personal trust with officeholders. More recently, however, the weakening of partisan loyalties has tilted the balance toward nonpartisan (personal) trust (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume). Nonpartisan trust was also dominant in Peru, where the weakness of the party system made partisan trust nonexistent and appointments were based on networks of personal trust and on the technical expertise of the appointee.

MOTIVATIONS, SKILLS, AND ROLES In the introduction to this volume we identified a broad set of motivations that patrons may have for making patronage appointments, among these the pursuit of technoprofessional advice and expertise, controlling the public sector bureaucracy and resources, engaging in political articulation, and rewarding party cadres. The case studies showed that in all countries covered in this volume, the quest for technoprofessional expertise for policy design and implementation was the main motivation for patronage appointments by a considerable margin, particularly at the top levels of the public administration. Two further motivations, “control of the public administration” and “political articulation” were also mentioned, particularly at the midmanagerial level. “Rewarding militants” was mentioned as a significant motivation only in Uruguay and Chile, countries in which political parties tend to have a larger pool of party cadres than in other countries of the region. In the case of Chile, this was particularly the case at lower levels of the administration (Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume). This does not mean that politicians do not use their power of appointment to reward militants; it, rather, challenges the conventional wisdom about patronage being just “jobs for the boys” (Grindle 2012). Even when rewarding militants, patrons appoint them to perform certain roles within the public administration. As was the case with other questions, the broad picture shadows variations between and within countries. In Brazil, that is the clearest case of coalition presidentialism in the region, presidents used patronage appointments

Conclusion

to hold governmental coalitions together. In Argentina, the administration of President Macri used discretionary appointments to discipline and depoliticize a public sector bureaucracy that was regarded as hyperpoliticized during the administrations of Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–2011, 2011–2015). But discipline (coded as “control” in the survey) was to be achieved by the appointees’ supposedly higher managerial skills and professional expertise, rather than through direct partisan control (Llano, this volume). Control over the public administration and the ability to act as intermediaries between their political patrons and other political actors (such as congress and the ruling party) to secure support for the executive’s policy initiatives were significant motivations in Uruguay, leading to the appointment of relatively large number of apparatchiks (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio, this volume). Political articulation was also mentioned as a motivation in Chile and Peru. But while in Chile political articulation was related to the goal of securing political support for policies within the ruling coalition, in Peru the main purpose of political articulation was interadministration coordination between the public administration’s technocratic elites, specially between sectors and levels of government (Moya Díaz and Garrido; Muñoz and Baraybar, both this volume). The motivations patrons have for making patronage appointments determine the roles appointees play and the skills required to perform said roles, as described in the typology outlined in the introduction to this volume. The roles grouped in the left quadrants of the typology, defined by the prioritization of technoprofessional skills, were dominant in all countries. Programmatic technocrats, a category that combines technoprofessional skills with nonpartisan trust, was the dominant role in all countries with the exception of Uruguay, in which party professionals, a category that combines technoprofessional expertise with partisan trust, was the most cited (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio). According to the survey, in Chile, party professional was the second-­most-­common role after programmatic technocrats (Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume). In Argentina, programmatic technocrat (CEOs and management experts recruited from the private sector) was identified as the main role, followed by party professional, a category that mainly included professionals linked to Macri’s ruling party, the PRO, which worked with Macri when he was the mayor of Buenos Aires (Llano, this volume). In Ecuador, in some cases the roles performed by appointees evolved during the course of their appointments: professionals that joined the administration as programmatic technocrats turned into party professionals

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as they became organically linked to the ruling party (Sandoval, this volume). In Brazil, programmatic technocrats were mainly senior civil servants discretionarily appointed to managerial to positions of trust. However, while formally politically independent from the parties that formed the ruling coalition, some senior civil servants had informal links with the coalition parties or with individual members of congress who lobbied for their appointment. In Mexico, the twin processes of democratization and neoliberal economic modernization shifted the balance decisively toward programmatic technocrats over party professionals that were more characteristic of the predemocratization era of PRI hegemony (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume). Something similar happened in Peru, where programmatic technocrats appointed on the basis of personal trust dominated the CPA, and party professionals were almost nonexistent (Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume). The importance of technoprofessional skills and the predominance of programmatic technocrats over party professionals may be accounted for by three mutually reinforcing explanations. First is the importance attributed by executive officeholders to delivering their policy commitments and to maintaining support from voters. Second is the executive officeholders’ lack of trust in the capability and political responsiveness of civil servants, and third, the parties’ lack of a large enough pool of party cadres with technoprofessional skills to cover demand for professionally qualified personnel. The overall picture concerning roles defined by the predominance of political skills was more varied. As expected, apparatchiks were dominant among politically skilled appointees in Uruguay (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio, this volume) and were also identified in Chile (Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume) and Ecuador, a country in which the distinction between partisan and nonpartisan trust was difficult to be established with any clarity (Sandoval, this volume). In Brazil, both political agents and apparatchiks were identified within the federal administration, with an overall predominance of political agents, particularly in the administration of President Bolsonaro. The relative importance of political agents in Brazil may be accounted for by the complex politics of coalition presidentialism and the weakly institutionalized nature of most parties. In Argentina, the government of President Macri’s appointed technocrats to perform the politically skilled role of commissar, which led Llano (this volume) to coin the hybrid term “technocratic commissars” to define their role. In both Mexico and Peru political agents and apparatchiks appeared to be less well represented (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas; Muñoz and Baraybar, both this volume).

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Table C.1. Party system institutionalization scores, 1990–2015 Ranking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Country Uruguay Mexico Chile Brazil Ecuador Argentina Peru

Score 1.16 1.09 0.90 0.48 −0.78 −0.81 −1.16

Source: Mainwaring (2018, 58)

Table C.2. V-Dem party system institutionalization index 2019 Country Chile Uruguay Mexico Brazil Argentina Ecuador Peru

Score 0.96 0.93 0.84 0,73 0.69 0.47 0.35

Source: Created by the authors from data from V-Dem 2019 Survey

EXPLAINING VARIATIONS IN PATRONAGE ROLES In the introduction to this book we identified three main explanatory variables: (1) Party system institutionalization and strategies of party building; (2) the strength and uses of presidential powers; and (3) the state’s bureaucratic capacity and the norms that regulate appointments to the public sector. The findings of our case studies suggest that these variables had some explanatory power, although further research is needed to determine the extent to which they contribute to variations in roles. We assumed that institutionalized parties privilege partisan over personal trust. We further assumed that in institutionalized party systems parties will have power of appointment. Parties were thought to have a pool of political cadres that they will seek to appoint to the public sector as apparatchiks, as well as their own pool of party professionals to advise officeholders in the design and implementation of public policy. These assumptions place patronage roles in institutionalized party systems predominantly in the upper quadrants of our typology. In contrast, in weakly institutionalized

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party systems trust between patrons and appointees will be personal rather than partisan, placing appointees in the lower quadrants of our typology as programmatic technocrats and political operators. According to Mainwaring’s (2018) scores for party system institutionalization for Latin America (1990–2015), the countries covered in this study are ranked as seen in table C.1. As noted in the introduction, the ranking should be taken with some caution, as party system institutionalization in the region is in a permanent state of flux. However, table C.2, constructed with information from the V-­Dem 2019 survey, shows similar results, with Chile, Uruguay, and Mexico as the countries with the most highly institutionalized party systems and Ecuador, and Peru at the bottom (V-­Dem 2019). Findings show that in the three higher-­ranked countries in terms of party system institutionalization (Uruguay, Chile, and Mexico), parties were more frequently consulted by officeholders when making appointments than in those lower down the ranking. But it was only in Uruguay that consultation with the ruling party was predominant, and in which partisan trust prevailed over nonpartisan trust, leading to the appointment of more party professionals than programmatic technocrats (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio, this volume). This was not the case in Mexico and Chile, countries in which, although there was consultation with the ruling party or party coalition, programmatic technocrats were still preferred to party professionals (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas; and Moya Díaz and Garrido, both this volume). Consistent with expectations, there was also a relatively large number of apparatchiks appointed in the three countries. Rewarding militants was mentioned as a relevant motivation in Uruguay and Chile but not in Mexico. Brazil merits separate consideration in terms of the relation between party system institutionalization and patronage roles. As evidenced by the 2019 election, the party system has become less institutionalized and more fragmented. However, there are significant variations in institutionalization at individual party levels. The most institutionalized party by far is the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the party that was in office during the presidency of Dilma Rousseff (2011–2015, 2015–2017). In line with our assumptions, it was expected that during Rousseff’s presidency party professionals and apparatchiks would have been the dominant roles. Expectations were not entirely confirmed, as programmatic technocrats and political agents were identified as the majority patronage roles during her two terms in office. Yet, in line with expectations, party professionals and apparatchiks were relatively more numerous in Rousseff’s administrations than in those of her successors, al-

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though their share of appointments was low and differences between Rousseff on the one hand and Michel Temer’s and Bolsonaro’s administrations on the other, were small. Also in line with expectations was the high number of political agents identified in the presidency of right-­w ing populist president Bolsonaro, who was the presidential candidate of the Partido Social Liberal (PSL), a nonprogrammatic catchall party with low levels of institutionalization. As argued in the introduction, the relations between patronage appointments and party system institutionalization should be studied together with strategies of party building (Shefter 1994; Levitsky et al. 2016). Parties can use patronage appointments to build up their party machines from within the state by appointing party cadres and by co-­opting independent appointees to become party cadres. In the latter case, we can expect that appointees’ roles that originally fell in the lower quadrants of our category (programmatic technocrats and political operators) will turn into party professionals and apparatchiks during the time of their appointments in the public sector. However, if we consider Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru, the three countries that rank lower in party system institutionalization, it was only in Correa’s presidencies in Ecuador (2007–2017) that there was evidence of systematic party building from within the state (Sandoval, this volume). In the case of Peru, the political officeholders’ lack of attempts at party building from within the state highlights the marginal roles of political parties in the country, as candidates do not depend on party machines for their electoral campaign, and technocratic networks rather than parties control the public administration (Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume). In the case of Argentina, while it can be assumed that private sector executives and technocrats appointed to the public administration supported the government of Macri’s probusiness administration and voted for the ruling party, PRO, there was no evidence that they transitioned to party professionals and apparatchiks to become cadres of the ruling party (Llano, this volume). It is also important to mention in this regard the case of the ruling PSL party during the government of President Bolsonaro in Brazil (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, this volume). As mentioned above, at the time of Bolsonaro’s election, the PSL was a small, nonprogrammatic catchall party with low levels of institutionalization and internal organization. Yet there was no evidence that Bolsonaro used the public administration to build up a pool of party cadres from within the state. The cases considered here not only confirm the weakness of political parties in Latin America but also the use of a variety of strategies of governance, electoral campaigning, and party building other than the systematic use of the public sector to build up and reward a large pool of party cadres

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to control the state, as is the case of European cartel parties (Katz and Mair 1995, Kopecký and Mair 2006) Arguably, traditional party machines are time-­consuming to build, difficult to command, and expensive to maintain. The appointment of programmatic technocrats on the basis of personal trust offers executive officeholders a more flexible alternative to using professional party cadres to secure policy responsiveness. Moreover, the predominance of programmatic technocrats over party professionals may also result from the scarcity of ideologically committed and technically proficient party cadres for filling positions of responsibility within the public sector. Concerning the clientelist dimension of electoral campaigns, this could be processed through the provincial or municipal branches of national parties, or by forming electoral alliances with local politicians and provincial parties, or through the hiring of politically independent local brokers (Novaes 2018). Moreover, the personalistic, top-­down nature of political campaigns in the region makes them particularly suitable to the use of new media and other direct forms of communication that do not require large number of “boots on the ground.”

THE STRENGTH AND USES OF PRESIDENTIAL POWERS We assumed that strong presidents would have more power of appointment, which they would use to control public administration, secure governability, and promote intraparty cohesion. Figure C.1 ranks the presidents’ powers between 2000 and 2019 in the countries subject to our study according to V-­Dem 2019 survey. The concept of presidential powers includes legislative, institutional, and party dimensions. There are some significant variations in the powers of presidents throughout the period, as powers are shaped by institutions but are also politically contingent, including elements of agency related to the holder of the presidency and his or her relation with the ruling party. For the purpose of our study some political variables may be more relevant than institutional ones. For example, the V-­Dem survey suggests a significant drop in presidential powers in Argentina in 2015, coinciding with the assumption of the presidency by Mauricio Macri, compared to the previous administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2003–2015). The drop may be attributed to Macri’s lack of congressional majority. Yet Macri’s control over his own party and over the governing coalition still gave the president considerable powers of appointment that he used strategically to attract and appoint private sector managers and technocrats to the upper levels of the federal government (Llano, this volume). There are some indications that the president’s power of appointment was

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Figure C.1. Presidentialism index, 2000–2019. Source: Created by the authors with data from V-­Dem 2019 survey

higher in countries with strong presidential systems. The V-­Dem index ranks Ecuador, Mexico, and Argentina as the countries in which presidents have stronger powers, and Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Uruguay as the ones in which the power of the president is relatively weaker. In line with our hypothesis, in Ecuador and Mexico presidents enjoyed significant power of appointment, either on their own or in consultation with the ruling party. In the case of Ecuador, almost half of interviewees considered that President Correa made appointments on his own, while over 40 percent stated that the president appointed in consultation with the party and a further 8 percent stated that he “sometimes” consulted the party (Sandoval, this volume). The case of Mexico (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume) also shows that presidents played a prominent role in patronage appointments, albeit mainly at the higher levels of the administration. An analysis of presidential powers in Brazil makes evident the complex and relational nature of the president’s powers. As noted by Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto, Brazilian presidents have numerous proactive and reactive powers. Yet these powers do not mean that presidents in Brazil are all-­ powerful actors who can rule as they see fit (O’Donnell 1994). In Brazil, presidents need to build governmental coalitions and the considerable institutional powers of congress and the courts are strong counterweights to the power of presidents. This balance of forces drives presidents to use pa-

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tronage strategically as a resource to hold governmental coalitions together and to take into account requests from parties and individual members of congress to appoint persons of their partisan or personal trust to the high public administration. The case of Chile also merits special consideration. V-­Dem places Chile at the bottom of the index but the ranking of Chile is out of line with studies of presidentialism that characterize the country’s political system as hyperpresidentialist (Siavelis 2016 and Moya Díaz and Garrido, this volume). Accordingly, the country’s survey on patronage shows that presidents rather than parties held the main power of appointment. Presidential powers are moderate in Uruguay compared to other countries of the region (Payne 2006). Institutional constraints combined with a strong party system have limited the autonomy of the president to make patronage appointments without consulting the ruling party and party factions (Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio, this volume). Finally, Peru combines relatively weak presidential powers with the weakest party system in the region, resulting in ministerial officeholders having power of appointment autonomously from both the president and the ruling party (Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume).

THE STATE’S BUREAUCRATIC CAPACITY AND THE NORMS THAT REGULATE APPOINTMENTS TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR We assumed in the introduction that patronage is influenced by the quality of the bureaucracy and by the legal dispositions within which public sector bureaucracies operate. Regarding the quality of the bureaucracy, a well-­qualified body of civil servants, particularly at the top of the administrative hierarchy, could make it less necessary to use patronage appointments to draw technical expertise from technoprofessional outsiders. Concerning the legal framework that regulates appointments to the public sector, we suggested that the rigid and ultralegalistic nature of civil service regulations for appointments and promotions could be used politically to justify the use of informal mechanisms to avoid expensive and time-­consuming procedures for appointment and promotion rules that reward seniority over merit. For the quality of the bureaucracy, we used Iacoviello and Strazza’s (2014) index of development and index of merit of the civil service in Latin America (figs. C.2 and C.3). The two indexes rank the countries included in this study in similar order. The development index places Chile and Brazil at the top, followed by Uruguay, Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador. In turn, the merit index places Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile at the top, with Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador at the bottom. Argentina was not included in this index, but following the

Conclusion

Figure C.2. Index of civil service development, 2004–2011/­2013. Source: Iacoviello and Strazza (2014) same methodology, Llano (2016) has assigned Argentina a score of 47 points in the merit index, which places the country between Chile and Mexico and just above the regional average of 42. The case studies suggest that the technoprofessional capacities of the top civil service influenced patronage appointments. In both Brazil and Chile senior civil servants have their own special regimes (Cargos de Direção e Assessoramento Superiores in Brazil and Sistema de Alta Dirección Pública in Chile) that combine meritocratic criteria with elements of political discretion. The regimes have effectively limited the scope for patronage appointments at the top levels of the administration and have contributed to higher levels of professionalism within the civil service (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto; and Moya Díaz and Garrido, both this volume). However, the availability of a pool of well-­qualified senior civil servants did not eliminate the political actors’ quest for trust when choosing top civil servants. This condition was partly contemplated by the introduction of elements of discretion in the mechanisms for appointment, while it also led to the officeholders’ use of informal mechanisms, such as the use of temporary appointments, particularly in Chile. While Mexico is placed at the intermediate level in Iacovello and Strazza’s (2014) indexes, arguably the status of the high civil service in the country is closer to that of Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay than that of Argentina. The capabilities of the high civil service in the country have been enhanced by the cre-

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Figure C.3. Civil service merit index, 2004–2011/­2013. Source: Iacoviello and Strazza (2014) ation in 2003 of the federal Servicio Profesional de Carrera. The regime introduced the principles of merit and equal opportunities in the federal public service and has contributed to raising the professional standards of the country’s high public administration. However, similarly to Chile’s Sistema de Alta Dirección Pública, the Servicio Profesional de Carrera has faced resistance from political officeholders. Politicians have sought to bypass its formal appointment rules through informal mechanisms, such as the overuse of noncompetitive temporary appointments, or have just ignored its dispositions, although recent regulatory changes have sought to minimize these informal practices (Dussauge-­Laguna and Casas, this volume). If the bureaucratic development of the civil service in Mexico places it closer to those at the top of the indexes, that of Argentina has evolved in the opposite direction. As part of attempts at setting up a professional and meritocratic body of high civil servants, the federal government created in 1984 the Cuerpo de Administradores Gubernamentales and in 1991 the Sistema Nacional de Profesionalización Administrativa, now Sistema Nacional de Empleo Público. However, the body of high civil servants and, more broadly, the open competitive system for appointments in the federal central administration were undermined by hyperpoliticization during the Kirchners’ administrations and by the appointment of private sector managers and technocratic outsiders in Macri administration (Llano, this volume). As Zuvanic and Diéguez (2016, 1) put it: “From early 2002 to the present [2015] high

Conclusion

managerial position appointments have been centrally filled through an essentially political discretionary modality: temporary appointments to high positions in the central public administration” (our translation). While the motivations for appointments and the origins of appointees are a product of the different political orientations of the two administrations, they reflect the political officeholders’ deep mistrust of the political neutrality and technical competence of the career civil service, combined with weak rule of law. As a result, only 6 percent of high civil servants in Argentina were appointed through open competition, compared to 68 percent in Brazil and 90 percent in Chile. (Zuvanic and Diéguez 2016, 5). While appointments on merit tend to be equated with competitive appointments, the case of Uruguay highlights the importance of also taking into account the mechanisms for promotion in the study of the politics of patronage. The country’s strong tradition of rule of law (World Bank 2022b) has restricted political officeholders’ power to make patronage appointments beyond the legally authorized cargos de confianza. This was reflected in Uruguay’s ranking third behind Brazil and Costa Rica in the region’s index of merit. Yet, as noted in Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio’s chapter in this volume, the Weberian features of the civil service in the country were undermined by officeholders’ practice of bypassing formal promotion mechanisms in order to promote employees of their partisan or personal trust through the mechanism of encaragaturas (provisional appointments). Peru and Ecuador are at the bottom of Iacoviello and Strazza’s (2014) indexes of development and merit. In Peru, the government enacted in 2008 a civil service reform act with the aim of setting up a meritocratic civil service that was complemented with the passing of a civil service law in 2013. The reforms included the creation of a corps of public managers composed of professionally qualified top-­level civil servants to be selected through a meritocratic contest (Muñoz and Baraybar, this volume). However, the process of appointment has not been properly followed. As Muñoz and Baraybar put it in their chapter, Peru remains a patronage system in which discretionary appointments remain the main way of accessing positions in the public service. The reasons for the failure to follow the rules of meritocratic appointment are similar to other case studies: First, appointing public servants through the official Contratación Administrativa de Servicios system is a lengthy process that often ends in failure because of the lack of properly qualified candidates. Second, the question of trust comes as a paramount reason for not complying with the competitive processes. However, in contrast to other countries, trust in Peru was not political but personal and technocratic, as patrons were them-

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selves parts of technocratic networks that controlled the high civil service and used patronage appointments to accumulate technobureaucratic power. Finally, the case of Correa’s technocratic populism in Ecuador is an example of the tensions between politicization and professionalization characteristic of patronage appointments in Latin America. As Sandoval states in her chapter in this volume, the passing of the new Ley Orgánica de Servicio Público in 2010 and the creation of the Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia in 2011 were part of the Correa administration’s attempts at increasing the professional capabilities of an historically professionally weak civil service. This goal materialized in the appointment of a large number of (mainly young) professionals to high and midlevel positions in the public administration. However, the quest for professionalization was undermined by the higher priority assigned by the president to the goal of building up the ruling party from within the public administration, which placed a greater emphasis on political alignments over professional capabilities. The president’s project of building a strong party within the context of a weakly institutionalized party system proved unsuccessful. Instead, patronage appointments contributed to building up a network of personal loyalties centered on the president. As a consequence, Alianza PAIS remained a weakly institutionalized party in line with the historical characteristics of the country’s party system. As Sandoval further notes, the public sector in Ecuador paid a high price for this strategy in terms of the hyperpoliticization of the public administration, the high turnover of public service personnel, the unsustainable expansion of the public sector, and the weakening of practices of good governance that reproduced the low capacity of the Ecuadorian state (Sandoval, this volume).

CONCLUSIONS Our comparative study of patronage appointments in Latin America makes a number of contributions to the understanding of the politics of patronage appointments in the region. While studies of public sector appointments have focused on the transactional elements of clientelist exchanges as the key driver for the appointments, we found that trust was by far the main reason why officeholders made patronage appointments. Together with the lack of evidence of mass clientelism in the central public administrations, this suggests a more complex picture of the interface between patronage, politics, and governance at national levels than the blanket label of clientelism. A more rounded understanding of the politics of patronage appointments in Latin America provides the theoretical and empirical bases for bridging the gap between the study of patronage appointments in advanced and emerging

Conclusion

economies: as in other regions of the world, appointments are a tool of governance both in terms of policy design and implementation and of political governability. Patrons use appointments mainly to further their policy initiatives and to control areas of strategic interest in the public administration (Kopecký et al. 2016), and not for politico-­electoral reasons. We must be careful, however, not to be too positive about the role of patronage in Latin America bureaucracies. At the top of the administrative hierarchy patronage may be a mechanism for bringing better qualified people into government, but the effects lower within the system are less clear. And perhaps most importantly, the use of patronage may prevent, or at least slow, the development of Weberian bureaucratic systems in these countries. But, that said, it appears that many countries with Weberian bureaucracies are moving toward more patronage recruitment at the top of the bureaucracy, largely because of issues of personal trust (Savoie 2022). The finding that in most countries trust was personal rather than partisan may be regarded as confirmation of the weakness of party systems in the region. This finding also suggests that party building through reward of party cadres with state jobs is not always central to patronage appointments. While in Ecuador the ruling Alianza PAIS used public sector appointments to build up the party from within the state, similar attempts were not evident in cases of weakly institutionalized ruling parties in Peru, Argentina (under Macri) and Brazil (under Bolsonaro). The finding that the capability to design and implement public policies was the main motivation for appointments and that programmatic technocrat was the main role played by appointees highlights the political importance assigned by officeholders to the performance of their governments, irrespective of whether the ruling parties were programmatic or otherwise. As Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­Neto note in relation to president Bolsonaro of Brazil, populists are also interested in policymaking. And the same applies to the administration of populist president Correa of Ecuador. The above findings show the analytical advantage of disaggregating the category “control” used by studies of patronage appointments (Kopecký, Scherlis, and Spirova 2008). It also shows the analytical power of our typology. As noted in the introduction, controlling policymaking through the appointment of party professionals and programmatic technocrats is different from controlling public sector resources through the appointment of apparatchiks and political agents, and the two should not be conflated. We are not arguing, however, that the predominance of technical over political capabilities in patronage appointments suggests that controlling the public

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administration was irrelevant for officeholders. Rather, it could be the case that control can be achieved by appointing a relatively small number of apparatchiks and political agents to strategic positions within the administrative apparatus. The relative dominance of appointees with technical skills and the lack of evidence of mass clientelism gives support to Grindle’s (2012) argument that patronage appointments can be helpful for achieving policy objectives, as well as for ensuring democratic responsiveness and even for increasing the professional capabilities of the public sector. It is also consistent with the findings of the Inter-­American Development Bank’s survey of the civil service in Latin America that found evidence of progress in the modernization and professionalization of the civil service in the region (Cortázar Velarde and Lafuente 2014, xxii; Iacoviello and Strazza 2014, 52). While the discretionary appointment of technoprofessional personnel may not have been the main driver for the improvement in the quality of the civil service in the region, the technoprofessional skills of appointees may have made a contribution to the quality of policy design and implementation. Yet resorting to patronage appointments to increase the technoprofessional capabilities of the public administration has a number of drawbacks, some of which are evident from the case studies. This question brings us back to the relations between political trust and professional expertise. As argued by Ramos Larraburu, Casa González, and Samudio (this volume), appointees’ dependence on the trust of their patrons undermines their professional autonomy and the ability to offer robust, independent advice. Moreover, the fact that public sector managers owe their jobs to their political patrons makes their positions dependent on their patrons’ political careers. As Muñoz and Baraybar note (this volume), if political officeholders lose their jobs, the technocrats discretionally hired by these officeholders usually lose their jobs as well. As a result, the public administration loses institutional memory and policy initiatives are at risk of being discarded by new political officeholders without proper consideration of their merits. The predominance of patronage appointments at the top and middle levels of the administrative pyramid sets up a two-­t iered system with a very low ceiling for tenured career civil servants (and usually low pay, too). Arguably, this is a serious drag on attempts at increasing the capabilities of the state, particularly but not only on the public sector’s ability to deliver services on the ground that are necessary to improve the wellbeing of the citizens. A parallel could be made here with the structural heterogeneity of the economies of the countries of the region, in which a thin layer of highly productive

Conclusion

multinational industries at the top combine with a much thicker layer of low productivity, domestic firms with the overall result of the low growth in productivity characteristic of most of the region’s economies (Ocampo and Vos 2008). Arguably the same principle applies to the public sector. Finally, the findings allow us to compare the politics of patronage appointment in Latin America with those of other emerging economies. In a study of public sector hiring in Ghana, Brierley (2021) seeks to address how and why politicians in developing democracies combine patronage and merit in public sector recruitment. In answering the question, Brierley hypothesizes that politicians in low-­income countries may support meritocratic recruitment for high-­skilled positions that influence state performance, while turning to patronage for appointing party brokers to low-­skilled positions. In line with Brierley’s argument, our study found that political officeholders in Latin America also prioritize the appointment of technically qualified personnel at the higher levels of the civil service. Yet appointments at this level did not always follow a meritocratic recruitment processes but were based on patronage (in the sense the term is used in this book). At the bottom of the administrative ladder we found less evidence than Brierley finds in Ghana of the systematic use of patronage to reward clientelist party brokers. This could be explained because the countries in our study are all medium-­high-­ and high-­income countries (World Bank 2022a), which tend to have lower levels of mass clientelism (Kopecký et al 2016). As noted above, it can also be the case that political brokers tend to be hired by provincial and municipal administrations rather than by the central state (Praça, Odilla, and Guedes-­ Neto, this volume). The two hypotheses are, of course, not exclusive.1 This book advances a number of relevant findings about patronage in Latin America. There is, however, still work to be done in order to better understand how patronage operates within different political systems. Although the variables we have identified do appear important for explaining differences in patronage practices, there also seem to be some influences from country contexts. For example, the strength of the party system and a tradition of the rule of law tend to differentiate Uruguay from the other cases. Likewise, the long domination of government in Mexico by the PRI appears to set it apart from countries with less stable pasts. Thus, as in any comparative study, it is crucial to understand the context within which the presumed independent variables are operating. In addition to the other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that may have different political histories and administrative systems, we need to systematically compare these findings with countries in Central and Eastern

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Europe, Asia (see Kim, Peters, and Knox, forthcoming) and Africa (Brierley 2021) to assess how other transitional countries cope with public personnel challenges. And finally, we have not really answered the “so what” question: Do levels and types of patronage matter for governance?

REFERENCES Brierley, Sarah. 2021. “Combining Patronage and Merit in Public Sector Recruitment.” Journal of Politics 83 (1): 182–97. Cortázar Velarde, Juan Carlos. and Mariano Lafuente. 2014. “Resumen Ejecutivo.” In Al servicio del ciudadano: una década de reformas del servicio civil en América Latina (2004–13), edited by Juan Carlos Cortázar Velarde, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés, xxi–xxvi. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. https:/­/­publications.iadb.org/­publications /­spanish/­document/­Al-­servicio-­del-­ciudadano-­Una-­década-­de-­reformas-­del-­servicio-­civil -­en-­América-­Latina-­(2004-­13).pdf. Grindle, Merilee S. 2012. Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Iacoviello, Mercedes, and Luciano Strazza. 2014. “Diagnóstico del servicio civil en América Latina.” In Al servicio del ciudadano: una década de reformas del servicio civil en América Latina (2004–13), edited by Juan Carlos Cortázar Velarde, Mariano Lafuente, and Mario Sanginés, 13–58. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank. https:/­/­ publications.iadb.org/­publications/­spanish/­document/­Al-­servicio-­del-­c iudadano-­Una -­década-­de-­reformas-­del-­servicio-­c ivil-­en-­América-­Latina-­(2004-­13).pdf Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1995. “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party.” Party Politics 1 (1): 5–28. Kim, Byong-­seob, B. Guy Peters, and Colin G. Knox. Forthcoming. Patronage Appointments in Asian Public Bureaucracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kitschelt, Herbert, Kirk A. Hawkins, Juan Pablo Luna, Guillermo Rosas, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister. 2010. Latin American Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kopecký, Petr, and Peter Mair. 2006. “Political Parties and Patronage in Contemporary Democracies: An Introduction.” Paper presented at workshop on Political Parties and Patronage, ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Nicosia, Cyprus, April 25–30. Kopecký, Petr, Jan-­Hinrik Meyer-­Sahling, Francisco Panizza, Gerardo Scherlis, Christian Schuster, and Maria Spirova. 2016. “Party Patronage in Contemporary Democracies: A Survey in 22 Countries and Five Regions.” European Journal of Political Research 55 (2): 416–31. Kopecký, Petr, Gerardo Scherlis, and Maria Spirova. 2008. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Party Patronage.” Working paper, Committee on Concepts and Methods, Series 25, Leiden University.

Conclusion Levitsky, Steven. 2018. “Peru: The Institutionalization of Politics without Parties.” In Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay and Collapse, edited by Scott Mainwaring, 326–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levitsky, Steven, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, eds. 2016. Challenges of Party-­Building in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Llano, Mercedes. 2016. “Burocracia pública y sistema político en América Latina. Factores asociados a la politización de los sistemas de gestión de empleo público en la región”. PhD thesis, Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Mainwaring, Scott, ed. 2018. Party Systems in Latin America. Institutionalization, Decay and Collapse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mainwaring, Scott, and Timothy R. Scully. 1995. “Introduction: Party Systems in Latin America.” In Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, 1–35. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Novaes, Lucas M. 2018. “Disloyal Brokers and Weak Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 84–98. O’Donnell, Guillermo A. 1994. “Delegative Democracy.” Journal of Democracy 5 (1): 55–69. Ocampo, José Antonio, and Rob Vos. 2008. Uneven Economic Development. London: Zed Books. Panizza, Francisco, Conrado Ramos Larraburu, and Gerardo Scherlis. 2018. “Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina’s and Uruguay’s Central Public Administrations.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 10 (3): 59–98. Payne, Mark. 2006. “El equilibrio de poder entre el Ejecutivo y el Legislativo: papel de la Constitución y los partidos políticos.” In La política importa: democracia y desarrollo en América Latina, edited by J. Mark Payne, Daniel Zovatto G., and Mercedes Mateo Díaz, 91–128. Washington, DC: Inter-­American Development Bank and Instituto Internacional para la Democracia y la Asistencia Electoral. Savoie, Donald J. 2022. Government Bureaucracy: Have Presidents and Prime Ministers Misdiagnosed the Patient? Montreal: McGill-­Q ueen’s University Press. Shefter, Martin. 1994. Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Siavelis, Peter M. 2016. “Crisis of Representation in Chile? The Institutional Connection.” Journal of Politics in Latin America 8 (3): 61–93. Stokes, Susan C., Thad Dunning, Marcelo Nazareno, and Valeria Brusco. 2013. Brokers, Voters and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. World Bank. 2022a. Data. https:/­/­datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/­knowledgebase/­articles/­906519. World Bank. 2022b. Worldwide Governance Indicators 2021 Interactive, Interactive Data Access. https:/­/­w ww.worldbank.org. V-­Dem. 2019. V-­Party Dataset. https:/­/­v-­dem.net/­.

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Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu Zuvanic, Laura, and Gonzalo Diéguez. 2016. El juego de la oca y la Alta Dirección Pública en Argentina. Desafíos y propuestas para construir directivos públicos idóneos. Documento de Políticas Públicas 181. Área de Estado y Gobierno. Programa de Gestión Pública. Buenos Aires: Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento. https:/­/­w ww.cippec.org/­publicacion/­el-­juego-­de-­l a-­oca-­y-­l a-­alta-­direccion-­publica-­e n -­argentina-­desafios-­y-­propuestas-­para-­construir-­directivos-­publicos-­idoneos/­.

Notes

INTRODUCTION: The Issue of Patronage in Latin America 1. The Northcote-­Trevelyan Report of 1854 is usually taken as the watershed event for creating a merit-­based system in the United Kingdom (see Gladden 1967). 2. Throughout this volume, we will use the term political articulation to refer to the ability to coordinate different political actors or public officials at different state levels to support the implementation of political programs, projects, and so on proposed by the government. 3. Or, for that matter, Donald Trump in the United States.

1: From Politicians to Managers Work on this chapter was elaborated in collaboration with Ingrid Baumann. Marcos Falcone and Erik Marsh contributed to the translation and editing tasks. 1. In December 2016 the Ministry of Economy and Finance was split in two, thus forming the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Finance. 2. For example, personnel at the Ministry of Agroindustry are regulated by SINEP, Servicio Nacional de Sanidad y Calidad Agroalimentaria (SENASA), and the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) hierarchical scales, among others. 3. Estimates made based on Secretaría de Gestión y Empleo Público (2018). 4. Interviewees are identified by a number in an anonymized sequential list. 5. The UCR’s share of the vote in presidential elections diminished from 50 percent in 1983 to 2 percent in 2003 (Levitsky and Murillo 2008). 6. Before being called Propuesta Republicana, the organization had been named Partido por el Trabajo and Compromiso para el Cambio (Mattina 2016). 7. The Constitution of Argentina grants the city of Buenos Aires the same degree of autonomy as the provinces. Therefore, the city’s chief of government has equal status to a provincial governor.

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8. Macri’s role as the final arbiter in cases of intraparty competition reflects the centrality of his leadership within the PRO (Mattina 2016; Vommaro and Morresi 2014). 9. Initially, Macri created the Fundación Creer y Crecer alongside businessman Francisco de Narváez, with the goal of assembling a team of advisors for a future political initiative. However, the institution split as a result of differences between the two over political strategies, with Macri keeping the porteño (an inhabitant of the city of Buenos Aires) team in order to strengthen his local political project. Following the split, Macri’s porteño team merged with Grupo Sophia, led by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who would later join Macri’s party and eventually replace him as chief of government of Buenos Aires. Grupo Sophia was mainly made up of leaders from civil society who focused on developing social policy (Mauro 2016; Mattina 2016; Vommaro and Armesto 2016). 10. In that regard, Vommaro and Gené (2017) quote Macri as saying, before the election, that “whoever wins will rule,” which implied that a potential Cambiemos government would not be coalitional. 11. One-­party cabinets have been dominant within the Argentine political system. Since the return to democracy in 1983, the UCR-­Frepaso alliance is the only recorded coalition government (Camerlo 2013; Coutinho 2013). 12. According to Amorim Neto (2013), proportionality in ministerial appointments within presidential systems depends on the strategies adopted by the president for implementing policy. If appointments are made in order to get legislation passed, ministries are distributed among the members of the coalition fairly equally. However, if presidents opt to implement their policies through executive decrees, they are more prone to building minority governments in which their partners tend to be underrepresented. 13. Camerlo (2013) differentiates between two extreme strategies of cabinet building: institutionalist and personalist. Here, the first is characterized by the recruiting of partisans who are subject to party discipline and provide legislative support. In contrast, the second strategy is characterized by the appointment of ministers who have a direct relationship with the president but are not endorsed by parties. 14. One of the main strategies used by presidents to secure their autonomy has been the unilateral modification of the structure of the adminstration in order to create new positions and fill them with people they personally trust (Moe 1985 cited in Coutinho 2013). In Argentina, the transformation of administrative structures to reinforce responsiveness on the part of the bureaucracy is a practice that has grown incrementally. The Argentine public administration is organized as a pyramid

NOTES TO PAGES 44–70

model with offices that are placed hierarchically beneath each ministry, secretary, and undersecretary. These administrative posts are complemented by other offices that are political in nature. Hence, increases in political offices imply an exponential increase (or decrease) of administrative positions from top to bottom. Thus, fluctuations in the size of the political layer of the bureaucracy reflect the utility assigned to office creation as a means of politically control the administrative apparatus. (Chudnovsky and Cafarelli 2018; Alessandro 2013). 15. These estimates come from Chudnovsky and Cafarelli (2018). 16. During the Kirchners administrations, a process of sequenced “blanketing-­in” occurred in two stages: First, temporary appointments considered precarious were regularized before vacancies were unfrozen. Public examinations were gradually reinstated in the second stage to fill 18,571 positions (15,699 corresponding to SINEP) (Llano and Baumann, forthcoming; Salas 2015). 17. These estimates are based on the quarterly reports published in the Boletín Fiscal. 18. See Decree 254/­2016 and Perfil 2016.

2: Patronage Appointments in Brazil, 2011–2019 The authors thank Emanuelle Nunes, Gabriel Guimarães, and Nathalia Foditsch for excellent research assistance. Special thanks to George Avelino, Francisco Panizza, Conrado Ramos, B. Guy Peters, and all the book workshop participants in Brasília, Lima, and London. The research was funded by FAPESP/­L SE, Grant number 2016/­50201-­0. 1. Interviewees are identified by numbers in an anonymized sequential list. Table 2.7 lists the institutional positions of the interviewees quoted in this chapter. 2. See the introduction to this volume for a full description of the typology and the characterization of roles. 3. As defined by Cornell, Knutsen, and Teorell (2020), citing Weber (1978), “The Weberian ideal type of bureaucracy entails hierarchical organization with clearly delineated lines of authority and areas of responsibility, that decisions are based on clearly codified rules and made in an impartial manner, and that bureaucrats are meritocratically recruited, have expert training, and advance in the organization based on objective criteria.” 4. See Article 19, of the 1988 Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act. Temporary Constitutional Provisions Act is the name that was given to the provisions with transitory nature in the constitution of 1988. These provisions were not supposed to last like the rest of the constitution, as they were addressing temporary needs during the transition to a new constitutional framework

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5. 2018 Federal Constitution, Article 37, Paragraph V. Translated by the authors. 6. Translated by the authors. 7. Portal da Transparência, www.transparencia.gov.br.

3: Patronage in Chile This chapter had the financial support of the Fondecyt Iniciación 2017 project, No 11170491, “Social links and corruption in the local public context,” from the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt), Chile, and had the support of the 2019 Teaching Performance Agreement granted by the Catholic University of Temuco. We published a preliminary version of these results as: Emilio José Moya Diaz and Víctor Garrido Estrada. 2018. “Patronage in Chile. A Heterogeneous Taxonomy that Changes.” Estudios Políticos 53 (July): 213–36. 1. “The merit index measures the degree of effective protection that the system offers against arbitrariness, political capture, and different types of rent-­seeking by interested groups or sectors” (IADB 2014). 2. Although parties have lost influence, their role remains important in appointments. In fact, they show a high degree of incidence in cabinet formation (Dávila, Olivares, and Avendaño 2013). 3. As noted in the introduction, the term political articulation is used in this volume to refer to the ability to coordinate different political actors or public officials at different state levels to support the implementation of political programs, projects, and so on sponsored by the government. 4. This last value could be explained because the study addresses the central and not the local sphere, where political patronage can be more clearly intermixed with other types of patronage (Barozet 2006).

4: The Politicization of Professionalization The data and research presented in this chapter are part of my doctoral research conducted at the University of Salamanca, within the Doctoral Programme in Rule of Law and Global Governance. I would like to thank Francisco Panizza for his constructive guidance and thoughtful insights. His valuable counseling played a central role in the development of this work and for that I thank him deeply. I would also like to thank Morgan Fairless for his skillful and meticulous editing work. 1. In a study on party systems with weak institutionalization conducted by Mainwaring and Scully (1995, 17), Ecuador was assessed as being at the same level of institutionalization as Bolivia and Brazil. Only Peru had a lower level of party institutionalization in Latin America. 2. Between 1996 and 2006 Ecuador had seven presidents. However, only three of them were elected through democratic elections. Abdalá Bucaram (1996–1997)

NOTES TO PAGES 112–114

was overthrown and replaced by vice-­president Rosalía Arteaga, who was also dismissed and replaced by the president of the national congress. Jamil Mahuad (1998–2000) was overthrown and replaced by vice-­president Gustavo Noboa, and Lucio Gutiérrez (2003–2005) was dismissed and replaced by vice-­president Alfredo Palacio. 3. For research on parties and electoral clientelism, see Burgwal 1995 and Freidenberg 2003. Abad (2016, 99–118) offers a valuable contribution to the analysis of the dynamics that characterized the Ecuadorian public administration between 1979 and 2013. 4. Grindle (2012) analyzes the Ecuadorian case based on research on the Ecuadorian Civil Service conducted in 2001 by Karen Ruffing-­Hilliard and in 2006 by Mercedes Iacoviello. 5. Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and the Central American countries with the exception of Costa Rica scored below 30/­100 in this measurement (Zuvanic and Iacoviello 2010, 32). 6. Correa ran for the 2006 presidential election without presenting Alianza PAIS candidacies for the legislative elections. This decision resulted in a lack of partisan support within the national congress. According to two founding members of Alianza PAIS political bureau I interviewed on June 19, 2017, the group did not present legislative candidacies because Correa was determined to remove the national congress. Additionally, Alianza PAIS did not have enough candidates to complete the ballot lists. Larrea (2009, 49) and Muñoz (2014, 185) claim that Correa and the party bureau decided not to present legislative candidacies because refusing to participate in a partidocratic (corrupted) congress would reinforce the credibility of their proposals and would represent the citizens’ opposition to state institutions. 7. The Group of Guayaquil within Correa´s first ministerial cabinet was formed by Jorge Glas (president of the Solidarity Fund); Ricardo Patiño (finance minister); Vinicio Alvarado (schoolmate, national secretary of public administration); Walter Solís (schoolmate, deputy minister for urban development); Alexis Mera (legal secretary for the presidency); María Duarte (college friend, minister for urban development); Pedro Solines (national undersecretary of public administration); Raúl Carrión (schoolmate, sports minister); Ana Albán (minister of environment); Caroline Chang and María Viteri (college friends, public health minister, and finance undersecretary, respectively); Cassia Delgado (aunt, general secretary for the presidency). 8. The lack of a strong party structure led Correa and Alianza PAIS to ally with various political movements to participate in the 2007 constituent assembly election. The coalition disbanded once the new constitution was approved in September 2008. 9. Two founding members of the Alianza PAIS political bureau whom I inter-

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viewed on June 19, 2017, stated that the list of candidates for the constituent assembly had party members mainly at the top of the list. They explained that the remaining candidates were relatives, people from different ideological orientations, and in some cases people identified with opposition parties. 10. Alianza PAIS founding members Gustavo Larrea and Betty Amores, who left the party after struggles with Correa, stated that Alianza PAIS was a chiefdom [cacicazgo] embodied by Correa. They criticized the loss of the original political ideas: “Decision making is in the hands of a [political] bureau made up of obsequious people who, in some cases, maintain ideologies opposed to those of the group” (América Economía 2012; translations mine). 11. Late in 2011 Correa sent to the national assembly an electoral reform project proposing changes in the method of the allocation of seats for provincial representatives. The reform proposed shifting from the Hare quotient to the D’Hondt method, the latter of which favors the representation of majorities; in addition, smaller constituencies were drawn. In the 2013 elections, the two provinces with the highest number of inhabitants were divided into four districts each; the third most populated province was divided in two districts. These changes secured Alianza PAIS a full majority in the national assembly until the end of the correísta mandate. 12. In November 2008 the Consejo Nacional Electoral (National Electoral Council) of Ecuador convened general elections to be carried out in 2009, as established with the entry into force of the 2008 constitution. Despite the fact that this legal body allowed just one re-­election for elective authorities, Correa ran and was re-­elected twice in a row by claiming that the new constitution’s mandate came into force after he was elected president for the first time. 13. In December 2015 the constitutonal court endorsed an amendment passed by Alianza PAIS parliamentary bloc that allowed Correa to run for a third consecutive re-election. As the amendment faced public rejection in a public referendum Correa abandoned the project to run again. Either way, Correa abandoned the project to run for the third consecutive re-­election. A national referendum held in February 2018 under President Lenin Moreno removed the indefinite re-­election amendment, reinstating the 2008 constitutional mandate. 14. SENPLADES was created in 2004 by merging the planning office, ODEPLAN, with the secretariat for dialogue and social planning, which formed a technical body subordinated to the presidency and responsible for national planning. In 2007, as Correa began his first term, SENPLADES absorbed CONAM, the national council for the modernization of the state, and SODEM, the national secretariat for the millennium development goals, becoming a large and powerful public entity. 15. Ley Orgánica de Servicio Público, Art. 2, Official Register 294, October 6, 2010.

NOTES TO PAGES 115–118

16. Ley Orgánica de Servicio Público, Arts. 17, 58, and 65, Official Register 294, October 6, 2010. 17. This was pointed out by interviewees 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 14–16, 19, 21, 23, 27, 29– 38, 40–42, 45, 46, 49, 54–57, 61, 63–65, 71–74, and 75. 18. This was reported by interviewees 2, 3, 6, 11, 12, and 15. 19. Interviewee 14 is an expert in public policy who held different high-­level positions during the Correa administrations and participated in various public service reform processes. This technocrat served as undersecretary of evaluation and control of the public service in the ministry of labor and participated in the process of merging the INM with the ministry of labor in 2016. 20. Executive Decree No. 901, Official Register No. 704, 03-­03-­2016, Republic of Ecuador. 21. Goal 12: Reform of the State for Collective Welfare. Policy 12.2: Promote an efficient and competent civil service with permanent training. Strategies: 1. Create a School of Government and Public Administration; 2. Identify qualifying requirements within planning offices in ministries and sectional governments; 3. Undertake studies in different areas of Public Administration; 4. Design of a virtual platform for online training; 5. Cooperation opportunities for training projects; 6. Inter-­institutional cooperation agreements available to public officials; 7. Review of current regulations for qualification requirements; 8. Evaluation of results (SENPLADES 2007, 7, 291–92). 22. “Admission to public service, upgrades and promotions within the administrative career will be made through merit contest determined by law” (2008 Constitution, Art. 228; translation mine); “The state will guarantee continuous training and education for public servants in institutes, academies and training programs for the public sector and will coordinate with national and international institutions through agreements with the state” (2008 Constitution, Art. 234; translation mine). 23. El Enlace Ciudadano was a TV program that broadcast information about Correa’s government, presidential activities, and political propaganda. It was aired every Saturday from January 20, 2007, until May 20, 2017, completing 523 transmissions. Each program lasted three hours. 24. This group was made up of academics such as Fander Falconí, Jeannette Sánchez, Alberto Acosta, Hugo Jácome, Augusto Barrera, Fausto Ortiz, and Eduardo Valencia, among others. 25. The group was initially led by a leftist militant, Gustavo Larrea—­the most experienced politician accompanying Correa—­along with Ricardo Patiño and political operators such as Eduardo Paredes and Héctor Egüez. Larrea was excluded from Alianza PAIS in 2009 and Patiño took control over the political operation, along with other operators.

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26. This approach was confirmed with the political appointment of Ricardo Patiño as Correa’s first minister of finance in January 2007. However, this decision was reversed six months later, giving way to the appointment of party professional finance ministers. 27. Patiño’s tenure as minister of foreign affairs (January 2010–March 2016) left this institution with a staff increase that went from 1,133 officials in 2009 to 2,160 officials in 2016 (see table 4.1). It is also important to note that the ministry had 697 employees when Correa assumed the presidency in 2007 and rose to 1,133 in 2009, an electoral year. 28. CRC committees operated also in countries where Ecuador had diplomatic missions and received consulates’ support. 29. Interviewees were identified through an anonymized numbered list. The first seventy-­five interviewees were officials of the Ecuadorian public service; interviewees 76, 77, and 78 were founders of Alianza PAIS who were appointed ministers and national secretaries during the Correa administration; participants 79 and 80 were experts with whom I conducted background interviews; and interviewee 81 was a National Assembly representative and provincial director of Alianza PAIS. 30. A career civil servant from the ministry of finance stated that at the beginning of the Correa administration this situation was commonly found at the top hierarchical level, but after a while it spread out to other departments. “Before, this was seen more at secretaries’ and ministers’ level. Now even the analysts publicly defend [the government] because they are forced to do so.” (interviewee 10, March 8, 2017). 31. Struggles between Correa and his successor, Moreno—­who served as Correa’s vice-­president for two terms and between 2017 and 2021 acted as president of Alianza PAIS—­led Correa to withdraw from the party he founded. At present Correa leads a faction of Alianza PAIS’s former militants who call themselves Citizens’ Revolution. 32. “Correa and Alianza PAIS have merged, and the public servants begun to understand that the president, the political party and the state are the same thing. They tell you that you have joined a team, but if you are not aligned they relegate you,” affirmed interviewee 31.

5: Patronage in the Mexican Public Sector, 2000–2018 1. Following convention, we do not attribute interviews; we cite them referring to the ministry in which the interviewee works (for example, IMoF means Interviewee from the Ministry of Finance). The number refers to the place the interviewee had in our sample for each ministry (for example, IMoF8 means this was the eighth person we interviewed).

NOTES TO PAGES 172–204

6: Patronage Appointments and Technocratic Power in Peru 1. This is an issue that certainly deserves further discussion. 2. For an analysis of this election see Cameron (2011, 375–98). 3. It also withdrew its candidates for congress, making it the first time in decades that the incumbent party did not have representation in congress after leaving office. See Fowks 2016. 4. Fuerza Popular is a registered party that defends the legacy of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori. It is led by his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, who served as first lady during her father’s term in office. 5. SERVIR was created as a specialized office to formulate human resources policies and regulations for the state administration, and was attached to the Presidency of the Council of Ministries. 6. Data retrieved from the official website of SERVIR: https:/­/­w ww.servir.gob.pe /­proceso-­de-­t ransito-­al-­nuevo-­regimen-­del-­servicio-­civil/­avances-­en-­el-­proceso-­de -­t ransito/­. 7. Source: SERVIR, List of entities in the process of transition. From: http:/­/­ storage.servir.gob.pe/­servicio-­civil/­Lista_entidades_en_transito.pdf. 8. Most of the new personnel recruited are under CAS contracts. 9. This was because Garcia had little trust in APRA’s technical cadres and thus found it better to fill the government’s key economic positions with experts or businessmen (Vergara 2018). 10. One of the most notorious cases is the one of Carlos Parra Pineda, a public manager from SERVIR and manager in the Court of Callao, who became involved with the criminal organizations Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto. See: http:/­/­blog .pucp.edu.pe/­blog/­v ictornomberto/­2018/­08/­17/­dilema-­de-­servir/­. 11. For an account of this tumultuous period see Vergara 2018; Paredes and Encinas 2020; Muñoz 2021; Dargent and Rousseau 2021.

7: Patronage in a Party Government 1. Uruguay and Costa Rica are the only countries in Latin America considered to be “full democracies” according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index (2018). 2. See World Bank, “Worldwide Governance Indicators” (n.d.). 3. See Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index: 2015” (n.d.). 4. See World Justice Project, “World Justice Project Rule of Law Index” (n.d.). 5. Constitución de la República | Parlamento del Uruguay 6. This statute responds to constitutional requirements. While the constitution of 1934 already established a requirement for said law, and other statutes ex-

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isted governing other modes of public employment, there was no similar statute in place for the central administration until 2013. There are some employees hired by the state under private sector modalities, but they do not constitute a significant number within the civilian workforce of the central administration. 7. See Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil, “Informe de Adscriptos” (2020). 8. Through this single-­w indow process the ONSC administers a webpage in which it publishes open calls for applications made by all state agencies. The ONSC also participates in the selection process. 9. The Frente Amplio’s programmatic proposal results from an intense process of debate and negotiation among its many party factions. Tabaré Vázquez often says that “one governs with two bibles: the constitution, and the party program.” 10. We identify direct quotes from key informants through an anonymized numbered list. 11. Data from the ONSC. The initial 2005 number was calculated without taking into account employees of the Ministry of Public Health, who in 2007 were transferred to a decentralized agency, the Administration of State Health Services. We exclude military and police personnel. 12. Senator and former minister and deputy minister, MoLAF. 13. Politician and former director of the Family, Adolescence and Childhood Institute, MSD. 14. Former minister and deputy minister MEF and former president of the Banco Central del Uruguay. 15. Midlevel civil servant, MoLAF.

CONCLUSION 1. Brierley uses patronage as synonymous with clientelism, while we consider clientelism as one among different modalities of patronage.

Contributors

VIVIANA BARAYBAR HIDALGO, MPhil in politics, University of Oxford, is a DPhil

student in politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations and a member of Nuffield College. She is also a Clarendon Scholar, studying the role that different-­level norms play on individual decisions to condemn or engage in corruption. MAURO CASA GONZÁLEZ has a doctorate in big data and public policy. He is

currently the global projects coordinator at Ricoh Global Services and a lecturer at the University of the Hemispheres, Ecuador. MAURICIO I. DUSSAUGE-­L AGUNA is professor-­researcher in the Public Admin-

istration Division and academic coordinator of the PhD in Public Policy Program, both at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. His current research interests include areas such as policy transfers, administrative reforms, regulation, and the effects of populism on public policy and administration. VÍCTOR GARRIDO has a degree in political science from the Catholic Uni-

versity of Temuco and further studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He was a researcher for the Chilean chapter of Transparency International. He has worked in public policy implementation for the regional government of Araucanía, Chile, in the program of Territorial Management for Lagging Zones.

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THE POLITICS OF PATRONAGE APPOINTMENTS MERCEDES LLANO is a professor at the University of Cuyo, with a PhD in gov-

ernment and public administration from the Ortega y Gasset Institute in Madrid. She is also a visiting researcher at the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad and a Travesía a la Innovación Pública team member. EMILIO MOYA DÍAZ is an associate professor of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Public Administration of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Universidad Católica de Temuco, with a doctorate in Latin American studies from Universidad de Chile. His lines of research are corruption, patronage, and elites. PAULA MUÑOZ is an associate professor at the Universidad del Pacífico, Peru. Her research focuses on electoral clientelism, patronage, corruption, subnational politics, and political parties in Latin America. She is the author of Buying Audiences: Clientelism and Electoral Campaigns When Parties Are Weak (Cambridge University Press, 2019). FERNANDA ODILLA holds a PhD in social science and public policy and a MA in

criminology from King’s College London. She is currently a research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna and a research affiliate at King’s Brazil Institute. Her work focuses on both top-­down and bottom-­up initiatives aiming to fight corruption and increase accountability, integrity, and quality of government. FRANCISCO PANIZZA is professor of Latin American and comparative politics

in the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His main research interests are democratization, patronage, populism, and the politics of financial crises. B. GUY PETERS is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the University of

Pittsburgh, and holds a PhD from Michigan State University and honorary doctorates from four European universities. He was the founding president of the International Public Policy Association. SÉRGIO PRAÇA is a professor at the School of Social Sciences of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of São Paulo. He researches corruption, bureaucracy, and legislative institutions, with a focus on Brazil. His work has been published in journals such as Governance, Latin American Politics and Society,

CONTRIBUTORS

Journal of Politics in Latin America, Latin American Research Review, and Novos Estudos Cebrap, among others. CONRADO RAMOS LARRABURU has a PhD in political sciences from J. W. Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, and is currently the head of the National Office of the Civil Service in Uruguay and a professor in government and public administration in the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universidad de la República. He has published extensively about public administration reforms in Latin America, with focus on civil service systems, models of public management, and the politics of patronage. TAMARA SAMUDIO is a doctoral candidate in social demography at the Universidad de la República, Uruguay. She is currently working on research on gender-­based violence for the nongovernmental organization El Paso, and is responsible for the Observatory against Gender-­Based Violence. CECILIA SANDOVAL is a doctoral candidate in rule of law and global gover-

nance at the University of Salamanca. She has a master’s degree in political science from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). She has worked in marketing research and government political communication analysis.

255

Index

Abad, Angelica, 247

armed forces, 84

Aberbach, Joel D., 76

Arteaga, Rosalía, 246n2

accountability, 92

auditing, 203

Acuña, Cesar, 15

Auditoría Interna de la Nación (Internal

administrative corps, 33, 47 Administrative Law Tribunal (Uruguay), 203 administrative reform, 31, 176–77, 191–92 Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), 74 agriculture, 53

Auditing Agency) (Uruguay), 203 Auditoría Superior de la Federació (Mexico), 144 Autoridad Nacional de Servicio Civil (SERVIR) (Peru), 176, 177, 192–94, 251–52nn5–7, 252n10 Avelino, George, 245n1

Ai Camp, Roderic, 102 Albán, Ana, 247n8 Albornoz, Vicente, 112 Alianza PAIS (Ecuador), 114, 115, 116, 119, 124, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 221, 236, 237

Bachelet, Michelle, 91, 95, 96, 98, 99, 211, 221 Baraybar, Viviana, 15, 25, 105, 172, 211, 235, 238 Barrera, Augusto, 249n24

Alvarado, Vinicio, 247n7

Baumann, Ingrid, 243

ambassadors, 85

Bertholini, Frederico, 66, 68

American Popular Revolutionary Alliance

“blanketing-­in,” patronage appointees,

Party (APRA) (Peru), 189, 191

245n16

Ames, Barry C., 65

Bolivia, 113

Amores, Betty, 247n7

Bolsonaro, Eduardo, 69

appointment powers, 219, 220-­223

Bolsonaro, Flavio, 69

Argentina, ix, 12, 14, 15, 16, 23, 24, 113,

Bolsonaro, Jair, 15, 64, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74,

221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229,

77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 221, 226,

230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 237

229, 237

258

Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu Brazil, ix, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, 113, 211, 220, 221, 222, 224, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237

central public administrations (CPAs), 219, 220, 226 centers of government, 18

Brierley, Sarah, 239, 240

Centrão (Brazil), 66

Broad Front (Uruguay), 19, 201, 222

Centro Democrático (Ecuador), 124

Bucaram, Abdalá, 111, 246n2

CEOcracy, 52

Budget Office (Argentina), 47

CEOcrats, 53

budgets, 67, 147

Chang, Caroline, 247n7

Buenos Aires, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 50, 51, 52

Chasquetti, Daniel, 206

Buquet, Daniel, xii, 205, 215

Chávez, Hugo, 114, 119

bureaucracy, 20, 23, 232–33

Chemical and Mining Society of Chile (SO-

business interest groups, 105, 157, 223

QUIMICH), 91 chief of cabinet (Argentina), 43

Calderón, Felipe, 146, 147, 148

chief of staff (Brazil), 73, 75

Cămara dos Deputados (Brazil), 63, 67, 68,

Chile, ix, 14, 15, 23, 24, 113, 211, 220, 222,

69 camarillas (Mexico), 12, 142, 143, 144, 167, 224 Cambiemos, “Let’s Change” (Argentina), 35, 37, 41, 42, 45, 48, 222, 244n10 Camerlo, Marcelo, 244n13 Campbell, Colin, 10 Cancillería (Argentina), 33 “Car Wash” scandal (Brazil), 14, 19, 201, 222, 252

223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235 Chile Deportes (Chile Sports), 91 Citizens Revolution (Ecuador), 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 130, 131, 250n31 Citizens’ Revolution Committees (CRC) (Ecuador), 119 civil service, 4, 70, 72, 81, 95, 112-­113, 144, 146, 176, 203-­204, 235, 238 Civil Service Development Index, 201

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 65, 72

Civil Service Law (Peru), 176, 177

Carey, John, 205

Civil Service and Administrative Career

cargos commissionado (commissioned positions) (Brazil), 70 cargos de confiança (trust positions): Brazil, 70, 219; Uruguay, 204 Cargos de Direção e Assessoramento Superiores (Brazil), 233 Carty, Kenneth, 37 Casa González, Mauro, 15, 19, 235, 238 Casa Rosada (Argentina), 4

(Ecuador), 113 civil society, 144, 244 clientelism, 5-­6, 7, 14, 104, 111, 133, 172, 214, 220 Coalición Cívica-­Afirmación por una República de Iguales (CC-­A RI) (Argentina), 35 coalitions, 6, 9, 19, 32, 40–41, 42, 62, 66, 85, 114–15, 195, 206–7, 224–25

Casas, Alberto, 25

Colombia, 14, 15, 113

Castillo, Pedro, 196

CONAM (National Council for the Mod-

Catholic University of Temuco, 246

ernization of the State) (Ecuador), 249

Index concursos desiertos (open-­competition procedures) (Mexico), 147 Confederación Intercooperativa Agropecuaria (Argentina), 52

Departmento Nacional de Infraestrutura dos Transportes (DNIT) (Brazil), 66 Development Corporation (Chile), 103 Díaz, Emilio Jose Moya, 24

Confederaciones Rurales Argentinas, 53

Dirceu, José, 72

constitutions, 91, 92–93

Direção e Assessoramento Superior (DAS)

Contaduría General de la Nación (General Accounting Agency) (Uruguay), 203 Contratación Administrativa de Servicios

(Brazil), 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 82 discretion, 6 distributive politics, 63

(CAS) (Peru), 176, 177, 180, 181, 192,

divided government, 175

195, 196, 235

Dominican Republic, 113, 247n5

contrata (fixed annual-­term personnel) (Chile), 93 co-­optation, 9, 42, 49, 66, 79, 114, 229

Duarte, María, 247n7 Duverger, Maurice, 77 Dussauge-­Laguna, Mauricio, 25

Copper Corporation (Corporación del Cobre, CODELCO) (Chile), 91

economic crisis, 68-­69

corporatism, 111

economic inequality, 17

Correa, Rafael, 16, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115,

Ecuador, ix, 23, 24, 25, 113, 221, 222, 223,

117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 126, 130,

225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233,

131, 133, 134, 135, 221, 222, 229, 231,

234, 235, 236, 237, 246n1

236, 237, 247nn6–7, 248nn8–11,

Egüez, Héctor, 250n25

249n14, 251nn31–32

El Salvador, 113

correista mandate (Ecuador), 248n11

electoral brokers, 11

corruption, 68, 72, 91

Electoral Court (Brazil), 63

Costa Rica, 14, 113, 235

encargaturas (provisional appointments)

Council of Ministers (Uruguay), 203 Court of Auditors (Uruguay), 203 Cuerpo de Administradores Gubernamentales (Argentina), 234

(Uruguay), 204, 210 Enlace Ciudadano (The citizens’ link) (Ecuador), 117, 249n23 entrepreneurship, 39 equipos (Mexico), 143

DaSilva, Luiz Inácio “Lula,” 24, 67, 72, 211 Davilazo (Chile), 91 de Kirchner, Cristina Fernández, 16, 44, 45, 49, 230

Escola Nacional de Administração Pública (Brasilia), xi Estatuto Administrativo (Chile), 92 Estatuto de Funcionarios Públicos de la

de Narváez, Francisco, 244n9

Administración Central (Statute of

decentralization, 203

Central Administration Civil Servants)

Delgado, Cassia, 247n7

(Uruguay), 203–4

Democratas (DEM) (Brazil), 68

Evans, Peter, 22

democratization (Brazil), 13

executive decrees, 63

259

260

Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu expert surveys, 22, 96, 119–20, 148, 172, 201, 208

Geddes, Barbara, 205 Gené, Mariana, 244 General Accounting Agency (Uruguay),

Falcone, Marcos, 243 Falconí, Fander, 249n24 Faoro, Raimundo, 79 FAPESP/­L SE (Brazil), xii, 245 Federación Ecuatoriana de Enfermeras Ecuador, 126 Federación Médica Ecuatoriana (Ecuador), 126

203 General Regulation of Public Servants’ Remunerations (Ecuador), 113 General Regulation of the Act on Civil Service and Administrative Careers (Ecuador), 113 Ghana, 239 Glas, Jorge, 132, 247n7

Figueiredo, Argelina Cheibub, 65, 85

Global South, 3, 4

“Five Axes of the Citizens’ Revolution”

González, Mauro Casa, 15, 19, 25

(Ecuador), 114

good governance, 6

fixers, 10, 12, 17

governance capacity, 212

Foditsch, Nathalia, 245

Grindle, Merilee, xii, 4, 6, 102, 112, 114,

Fondecyt Iniciación (Chile), 246

194, 238

forced resignations, 147

Ggroup loyalties, 143-­144

FOSIS (Solidarity and Social Investment

Group of Guayaquil, 132, 248

Fund) (Chile), 103

Grupo Sophia (Argentina), 244

Fox, Vicente, 144–48

Gryzmala-­Busse, Ann, 205, 216

Frente Amplio (FA) (Uruguay), 19, 201,

G25, 53

202, 204, 206–7, 222, 251n9 Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) (Peru), 175, 251n4 Fujimori, Alberto, 174, 175, 189, 191, 193,

Guatemala, 113 Guedes-­Neto, João V., 24, 62, 220, 231, 237 Guimarâes, Gabriel, 245 Gutiérrez, Lucio, 246n2

195, 251n6 Fujimori, Keiko, 174, 175, 251n4

Heredia, Marina, 54

Função Comissionada do Poder Executivo

Honduras, 113

(FCPE) (Brazil), 71, 72, 73, 81

honorarios (short-­term workers) (Chile), 93

funcionarios de confianza (Peru), 179

Humala, Ollanta, 173–75, 189

Fundación Creer y Creer (Argentina), 244

hyperpresidentialism, 32, 91, 111, 119, 135

Fundación Pensar, 52 Iacoviello, Mercedes, 23, 113, 232, 235 Gabinete de Segurança Institutional (Institutional Security Office) (Brazil), 74 Garcé, Adolfo, xii, 205, 216 García, Alan, 174, 189, 251n9 Garrido, Victor, 24, 90

ideology, 91 impeachment, 63 implementation, 103, 126, 128, 165, 184, 237 Indigenous people, 126

Index informal institutions, 21-­22, 208

leadership, 36

Institute of Agricultural Development

legalism, 20

(Chile), 103 Instituto de Estadísticas y Censos (INDEC;

Ley Orgánica de Servicio Público (LOSEP) (Ecuador), 115, 116, 119, 134, 236

Institute of Statistics and Census)

LGBTI groups, 126

(Argentina), 46, 47, 48, 53

libre designación (unrestricted appointment)

Instituto Nacional de la Meritocracia (INM) (Ecuador), 116, 119, 134, 236 Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) (Argentina), 243 Inter-­American Development Bank, 20, 95, 238 interest groups, 222 Internal Auditing Agency (Uruguay), 203

(Mexico), 147 Limoeiro, Danilo, 67 Limongi, Fernando de Magalhaes Papaterra, 65, 85 Llano, Mercedes, 24, 226, 233 locadores de servicios (service providers) (Peru), 177 López-­Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 169 Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto (Peru),

Jackson, Andrew, 3

251n10

Jácome, Hugo, 249n24

Los Pinos (Mexico), 4

Joignant Rondón, Alfredo, 102

Luján, Diego, xii

Juliana revolution of 1925 (Ecuador), 112

Luna, Juan Pablo, 90, 104,107

Kirchner, Néstor, 44, 45, 47, 49, 224, 225,

Macri, Mauricio, 15, 32, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44,

230, 234, 245n16 Kirchnerism–anti-­Kirchnerism divide, 40, 48

45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 221, 222, 225, 226, 229, 230, 244nn8–10 Mahuad, Jamil, 247

Kirchnerista, 211

Mainwaring, Scott, 14, 23, 227, 228, 247n2

Kirchnerist-­Peronist era, 37

Mair, Peter, 7, 11, 172

Kolina (Argentina), 49

managerialism, 50, 52

Kopecký, Petr, 5, 7, 11, 22, 119, 172

Maraví, Iber, 196

Kuczynski, Pedro Pablo, 173, 175, 176, 177,

Marsh, Erik, 243

189, 191, 195

Mensalão scandal (Brazil), 72 Mera, Alexis, 247n7

La Cámpora (Argentina), 44, 49 Larrea, Gustavo, 247n10, 249n25

merit-­based system, 4, 6, 92, 113, 115, 141, 145, 243

Larreta, Horacio Rodríguez, 244n9

Mesa Diretora (Brazil), 66

Latin America, ix, 31, 66

Mexico, ix, 12, 16, 23, 24, 25, 113, 220, 221,

Latinobarómetro, 104

222, 223, 224. 226, 227, 228, 231, 232,

Lava Jato scandal (Brazil), 14, 67, 68, 175

233, 234, 239

Law of Civil Service and Administrative Career (Ecuador), 112–13

Meyer-­Sahling, Jan-­Hinrik, 22, 119 minders, 12

261

262

Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu Ministry of Agriculture (Ecuador), 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133, 222 Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) (Peru), 172, 182, 184, 186, 190, 191 Ministry of Agroindustry (Ministerio de

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mexico), 145, 148 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA; Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores) (Uruguay), 207 Ministry of Health (Ecuador), 222

Agroindustria ) (Argentina), 33, 46, 47,

Ministry of Health (Mexico), 148

51, 52

Ministry of Interior (Chile), 96, 103

Ministry of Cities (Brazil), 68 Ministry of Culture (Argentina), 46

Ministry of Labor (Ministerio del Trabajo) (Ecuador), 115, 116

Ministry of Defense (Mexico), 145

Ministry of Labor (Peru), 177

Ministry of Economy (Chile), 96

Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fish-

Ministry of Economy (Brazil), 89

eries (MoLAF; Ministerio de Ganaderia,

Ministry of Economy (Mexico), 148

Agricultura y Pesca) (Uruguay), 207,

Ministry of Economy (Peru), 223 Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) (Peru), 172, 182, 183, 186-­7, 190, 191, 194, 195 Ministry of Economy and Finances (MEF; Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas) (Uruguay), 207, 201, 212 Ministry of Education (Argentina), 51

210, 211, 212, 213 Ministry of Marine (Mexico), 145 Ministry of Micro and Small Enterprise (Brazil), 68 Ministry of Mining and Energy (Brazil), 82, 89 Ministry of Mining and Energy (MINEM) (Peru), 172, 182, 183, 184, 187, 190, 191

Ministry of Education (Brazil), 89

Ministry of Modernization (Argentina), 51

Ministry of Education (MINEDU) (Peru),

Ministry of Production (Argentina), 51

172, 182, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 223 Ministry of Finance (Argentina), 4, 46 Ministry of Finance (Chile), 96 Ministry of Finance (Ecuador), 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131 Ministry of Finance (MoF) (Mexico), 148, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 212 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerio de

Ministry of Public Administration (Mexico)-­147, 152 Ministry of Public Health (Ecuador), 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 133 Ministry of Public Health (Uruguay), 253 Ministry of Public Works (Chile), 91 Ministry of Social Development(Ministerio de Desarrollo Social )( (Argentina), 33, 48, 51, 52

Relaciones Exteriores y Culto) (Argen-

Ministry of Social Development (Chile), 96

tina), 33, 46, 47, 52, 53

Ministry of Social Development (Ecuador),

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ecuador), 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133

120 Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) (Mexico), 148, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157,

Index 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167 Ministry of Social Development (MSD; Min-

National Department of Transport Infrastructure (Brazil), 66, 89 National Plan for Well-­Being (Ecuador), 114

isterio de Desarrollo Social) (Uruguay),

Nationalist Peruvian Party, 174

207–8, 210, 212

neoliberalism, 15, 226

Ministry of Social Inclusion (Ecuador), 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 222 Ministry of Social Inclusion and Develop-

nepotism, 151 Neto, Amorim, 42, 244 networks, 100, 223

ment (MIDIS) (Peru), 172, 182, 187,

neutral competence, 3

191, 223

Nicaragua, 113, 118

Ministry of the Controllership and Administrative Development (Mexico), 145 Ministry of Tourism (MoT) (Mexico), 148, 151, 156 Ministry of Transport (Argentina), 51

Noboa, Gustavo, 247n2 NGOs, 40, 50, 52, 106, 107 Northcote-­Trevelyan Report, 243n1 (intro.) Nova Matriz Econômica (Brazil), 78–79 Nunes, Emanuelle, 245

Ministry of Transportation (Brazil), 89 Ministry of Treasury and Finance Ministry

O’Dwyer, Conor, 205

of Treasury and Finance (Ministerio de

Obregón, Álvaro, 142

Hacienda y Finanzas Públicas) (Argen-

Observation de la Política Fiscal de Quito,

tina), 33, 243 Ministry of Urban and Territorial Develop-

121 Odilla, Fernanda, 24, 62, 220, 231, 237

ment (MoUD) (Mexico), 148, 151, 152,

Office of Human Resources (Argentina), 47

155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164,

Office of the Presidency (Ministério da Casa

165, 166, 167 Moore, Emily H, 62 Moreno, Lenin, 249, 251 Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB), 64, 65, 68, 72, 78 Movimiento de Participación Popular (MPP) (Uruguay), 206, 207, 211

Civil) (Brazil), 71 oficiales mayores (general administrator) (Mexico), 145 Oficina de Informació Reclamos y Sugerencias (OIRS, Office of Information, Claims, and Suggestions) (Chile), 104 Oficina Nacional del Servicio Civil (ONSC;

Movimiento MAR (Ecuador), 124

National Civil Service Office) (Uru-

Mujica, José, 19, 201, 206

guay), 203, 204, 207, 209, 210, 217

Muñoz, Paula, 15, 25, 105, 172, 211, 235, 238

“organismos desconcentrados” (ministerial arm’s-­length agencies) (Mexico), 145 Organization for Economic Co-­operation

National Civil Service Authority (Peru), 176 National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt) (Chile), 246

and Development, 20 Ortiz, Fausto, 249n24 OSUNTRAMSA (Ecuador), 126

263

264

Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu Palacio, Alfredo, 24

Pasco, Mario, 194

Panama, 113

Patiño, Ricardo, 118, 249nn25–27

Panizza, Francisco, 32, 49, 75, 77, 91, 101

patronage: apparatchiks, 11-­1 2, 64, 77-­78,

Paraguay, 12, 16, 113

82-­83, 132, 167, 169, 186, 189, 226,

Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) (Mexico),

229; commissars, 130, 213, 226; defi-

144, 146, 148

nition, 3, 5; ministerial appointment,

Partido Colorado, 16

124; motivation, 7, 100, 126, 128, 141,

Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira

163, 224–27; party control, 124–26,

(PSDB), 65, 68 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) (Brazil), 64, 65, 228

154, 190–91; party professionals, 10, 132, 169, 186, 189, 195, 202, 212, 225, 228; political agents, 12, 130, 132, 213,

Partido Justicialista (PJ) (Argentina), 34

214; programmatic technocrats, 10-­11,

Partido Nacional Revolucionario (Mexico),

49-­50, 54, 64, 76, 102, 118, 167, 169,

142

187, 196, 225, 226, 228, 230; roles, 7-­8;

Partido Nacionalista Peruano, 174, 175

sham examinations, 153; social organi-

Partido Popular Socialista (PPS) (Brazil),

zations, 126; typology, 8-­1 2

68

Peña Nieto, Enrique, 141, 148, 149, 154,

Partido por el Trabajo and Compromiso

221, 222

para el Cambio (Argentina), 243

Pendleton Act, 3

Partido Progressista (Brazil), 68

Penta (Chile), 91

Partido Renovador Trabalhista Brasileiro

Pereira, Carlos, 65, 66

(PRTB) (Brazil), 69 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) (Mexico), 16, 142, 144, 149, 154, 222, 224, 226, 239 Partido Social Cristão (Brazil), 68 Partido Social Democrático (Brazil), 68 Partido Social Liberal (PSI) (Brazil), 64, 229 Partido Trabalhista Cristão (Brazil), 68

Peronism, 34, 35, 53 Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) (Argentina), 34, 35, 37, 38, 39 personalistic party, 35-­36, 37, 41, 55, 221 Peru, ix, 15, 23, 24, 25, 105, 113, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237 Peru-­United States Free Trade Agreement, 194

partisan identification, 188, 224

Peruanos Por el Kambio (PPK), 174, 175

party building, 14, 119, 229

Peters, B. Guy, 32, 73, 101, 104

party factions, 206, 210–11

Petrobras (Brazil), 67

party professionals, 64, 77, 82-­83, 102, 118,

Pineda, Carlos Parra, 251n10

207, 214 party systems, 63, 221–22, 238; deinstitu-

Piñeiro, Rafael, 205 Piñera, Sebastián, 91, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 211

tionalization, 34, 38, 134, 176; institu-

planilleros (Peru), 182

tionalization, 13–18, 23, 32, 56, 64, 65,

planta (permanent employees) (Chile), 93

90, 98, 142, 173, 174, 201, 227–28, 237

policy reform, 8

Index political agents, 64, 78-­79, 84 political articulation, 243n2

Ramos Larraburu, Conrado, 15, 19, 235, 238

political capital, 107

Rauch, James, 22

political competition, 143, 144

regimen de la revolución (revolutionary

political instability, 111

regime) Mexico), 141

political recruitment, 178

Rehren, Alfredo, 206

politicization, of bureaucracy, 5, 23, 44, 45,

Renno, Lucio, 66

46-­47, 48, 118, 120, 133, 202, 210

“revolving door,” 79

Popular Force (Peru), 175

Rockman, Bert A., 77

populism, 79-­80, 236

rosca política (Argentina), 42

pork-­barrel politics, 66

Rose, Richard, 207

porteño (Argentina), 244n9

Rosenblat, Fernando, 90, 104

Power, Timothy, 65

Rousseff, Dilma, 24, 64, 67–68, 72, 74,

Praça, Sérgio, 24, 62, 220, 231, 237

77–79, 81–83, 211, 228–29

Prendergast, Canice, 77

Ruffing-­Hilliard, Karen, 247n4

presidential cabinet, 42-­43

rule of law, 235

presidentialism, 17-­18, 19, 23, 62-­63, 75, 97,

Ruptura 25 (Ecuador), 118

154, 205, 220, 230–32 principal agent model, 17-­18

Saavedra, Jaime, 191

procurement, 66

Sagasti, Francisco, 196

professionalism, 76-­7 7, 114, 118

Samudio, Tamara, 15, 19, 235

professionalization, 22, 33, 46, 95, 105, 111,

Samuels, David J., 77

112, 114, 236

Sánchez, Jeannette, 249n24

Progressistas (Brazil), 68

Sandinistas, 118

programmatic political party, 16-­17, 202,

Sandoval, Cecilia, 24, 236

205 Propuesta Republicana (PRO) (Argentina),

Sartori, Juan, 15 Scherlis, Gerardo, 37, 211

35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 50,

Schneider, Ben Ross, 67

51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 221, 225, 229, 244

Scully, Timothy R., 14

PSI (party system institutionalization), 14, 15, 16, 23 PSL (Brazil), 64, 69, 72, 77, 78, 80, 229 Public Central Administration (PCA) (Peru), 194 public managers, 193–94 public policy, 215 Puhle, Hans Jürgen, xii

Secretaría de Gestión y Empleo Público (Argentina), 33, 243 Secretaría de la Función Pública (Mexico), 145 Secretaria Geral da Presidência da República (General Secretariat of the Presidency) (Brazil), 72 Secretariat of Politics (Ecuador), 119 Senado Federal (Federal Senate) (Brazil),

Quality of Governance survey, 20

67, 68

265

266

Francisco Panizza, B. Guy Peters, and Conrado Ramos Larraburu senior public management, 45, 93-­94, 234–35 Senior Public Management System (Chile), 93 SENPLADES (National Secretariat for

spoils system, 3, 143 state-­owned enterprises (SOE), 62, 67 Statute of Central Administration Civil Servants (Uruguay), 203–4 Strazza, Luciano, 232, 233, 234, 235, 240

Planning and Development) (Ecuador), 115, 117, 118, 248n14 SERCOTEC (Technical Cooperationa Service) (Chile), 103 Servicio Exterior de la Nación (National Foreign Service) (Argentina), 33 Servicio Nacional de Sanidad y Calidad Agroalimentaria (SENASA) (Argentina), 243n2 Servicio Professional de Carrera (SPC) (Mexico), 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153, 167, 168, 169, 234 Serving Citizens: A Decade of Civil Service Reforms in Latin America (2004–13), 95 Shugart, Matthew Soberg, 205 Silva, Patricio, 10 Sistema de Alta Direción Pública (SADP; Senior Public Management System) (Chile), 3, 94, 95, 96, 107, 234 Sistema Nacional de Empleo Público

taxation, 67 Teaching Performance Agreement (2019) (Chile), 246 technocrats, 8, 24, 42-­43, 49, 52, 103, 116-­ 117, 144, 160, 185, 186, 189, 190, 225 Temer, Michel, 64, 67, 68, 72, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 229 temporary employment, 32, 34, 45, 93, 115–16, 135, 180 Temporary Constitutional Provisions Act (Brazil), 246n4 think tanks, 40, 54, 76, 105, 222 Toledo, Alejandro, 189 Transitional Constitutional Provisions Act (1988) (Brazil), 246n4 transparency, 80, 104 Tribunal de Cuentas (Court of Auditors) (Uruguay), 203 Tribunal de lo Contencioso Administrativo

(SINEP) (National System of Public

(Administrative Law Tribunal) (Uru-

Employment) (Argentina), 31-­32, 33,

guay), 203

34, 47, 234, 243n2 skills, 9-­10, 49, 132, 224-­27

Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (Electoral Court) (Brazil), 63, 80

social movements, 222

Trump, Donald, 243n3

Sociedad Rural Argentina, 52

trust, 8-­9, 15-­16, 32, 38, 49, 70, 93, 94, 101,

Solidarity and Social Investment Fund (Chile), 103 Solidarity Fund (Ecuador), 248

107, 131-­32, 135, 158, 167, 178, 181-­82, 201, 223-­2 4, 236 Tsebelis, George, 73

Solines, Pedro, 247n7 Solís, Walter, 247n7 SOQUIMICH (Chemical and Mining Society of Chile), 91 Spirova, Maria, 7, 11

Undersecretariat for Democratic Reform of the State and Programmatic Management (Ecuador), 117 Unidad Primero (Ecuador), 124

Index Unification and Standardization of Public Sector Pay (Ecuador), 113 Union Cívica Radical (UCR) (Argentina), 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42 unions, 106, 151, 220 United Kingdom, 9, 243 United Nations Development Program, 105, 107 United States, 3 University of Salamanca, 247 Uruguay, ix, 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 113, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 239 Valencia, Eduardo, 250n24 varities of Democracy, 23 Vázquez, Tabaré, 19, 201, 206, 252n9 V-­Dem, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232 Venezuela, 14, 113, 119 veto power /­players, 73 Viteri, María, 247n7 Waissbluth, Mario, 94, 95 Weber, Max, 92, 204, 235, 237, 245n3 World Bank, 20 Yaffé, Jaime, xii, 205–6 Zucco, Cesar, 77 Zuvanic, Laura, 23, 113

267