世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

The extent to which a party system is nationalized—with nationalization being defined as the degree to which major political parties obtain similar vote shares throughout the national territory—has considerable consequences for political representation, public policy making, and even the survival of democracy. Yet, so far there is little empirical evidence about the conditions that promote or inhibit the development of nationalized party systems in new democracies. Using electoral data from 89 elections in 16 Latin American democracies, this article provides a systematic analysis of the effect of decentralization on party system nationalization. The results show that political decentralization and fiscal decentralization inhibit the development of nationalized party systems, thus suggesting that a trade-off exists between decentralized governance and party system nationalization. These results are robust when controlling for ethnolinguistic fractionalization and characteristics of the electoral system.

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Decentralization and the Development of Nationalized Party Systems in New Democracies: Evidence From Latin America

Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,000 public sector employees in 212 European regions—and a new objective corruption risk measure including over 14 million procurement contracts Both show a remarkable subnational variation across Europe The study finds that corruption risks are indeed significantly lower where bureaucrats’ career incentives exclusively follow professional criteria In substantial terms, moving EU regions so that bureaucrats’ merit and effort would matter as much as in, for example, Baden-Wuttemberg (90th percentile) could lead to a 13–20 billion Euro savings per year

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Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes

This article examines the patterns of party patronage in post-communist Europe and provides an explanation for the varying practices observed by stressing the institutional legacies of the past. Drawing on the distinction between different types of communist regimes, it formulates three hypotheses concerning the extent, underlying motivations and intra-party control of patronage which guide the empirical analysis. It then clarifies the key concepts and discusses the methodology and data used in the article. Further, the three hypotheses are probed with data collected in a large expert survey in Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In accordance with the hypotheses, these three countries are found to differ in the pervasiveness of patronage within the state institutions, in the reasons why party politicians engage in patronage practices and, to a lesser degree, in the intra-party mechanisms of controlling and distributing patronage. It is argued that this variation can be, at least partially, attribut...

‘Jobs for the Boys’? Patterns of Party Patronage in Post-Communist Europe

Corruption is a serious threat to prosperity, democracy and human well-being, with mounting empirical evidence highlighting its detrimental effects on society. Yet defining this threat has resulted in profound disagreement, producing a multidimensional concept. Tackling this important and provocative topic, the authors provide an accessible and systematic analysis of how our understanding of corruption has evolved. They identify gaps in the research and make connections between related concepts such as clientelism, patronage, patrimonialism, particularism and state capture. A fundamental issue discussed is how the opposite of corruption should be defined. By arguing for the possibility of a universal understanding of corruption, and specifically what corruption is not, an innovative solution to this problem is presented. This book provides an accessible overview of corruption, allowing scholars and students alike to see the far reaching place it has within academic research.

Making Sense of Corruption

Party patronage is generally associated with social, economic and political underdevelopment, and is hence seen as largely irrelevant in the context of contemporary European politics. In this article, we argue to the contrary, proposing that patronage reappears on the stage of European politics as a critical organizational and governmental resource employed by political parties to enhance their standing as semi-state agencies of government. In order to illustrate our main contention, we first define party patronage, disentangling it from other notions of political particularism that are often used synonymously in the literature. Second, we provide a brief overview of the literature on the past and present of patronage practices in Europe, arguing that rather than declining, patronage is still likely to be a relevant feature of contemporary party politics in Europe. Finally, we analyse the role of party patronage in the light of recent developments in several European countries, identifying three distinct patterns of patronage practices in the region.

Party Patronage in Contemporary Europe

This Research Note presents a new dataset of party patronage in 22 countries from five regions. The data was collected using the same methodology to compare patterns of patronage within countries, across countries and across world regions that are usually studied separately. The Note addresses three research questions that are at the centre of debates on party patronage, which is understood as the power of political parties to make appointments to the public and semi-public sector: the scope of patronage, the underlying motivations and the criteria on the basis of which appointees are selected. The exploration of the dataset shows that party patronage is, to a different degree, widespread across all regions. The data further shows differences between policy areas, types of institutions such as government ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and higher, middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. It is demonstrated that the political control of policy making and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments. However, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve the purpose of both political control and rewarding supporters in exchange for votes and services. Finally, the data shows that parties prefer to select appointees who are characterised by political and personal loyalty as well as professional competence.

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Party patronage in contemporary democracies. Results from an expert survey in 22 countries from five regions

Studies on the Argentine public administration have usually underlined the weakness of Argentine state bureaucracies On the basis of these assertions, scholars have tended to equate the number of state jobs with cases of patronage By doing so, they have neglected the crucial issue of the scope of appointments effectively controlled by political parties This article applies an innovative empirical inquiry to measure the extent of party patronage, assessing where, how deeply, and to what extent parties reach into the Argentine federal state structures While the results by and large confirm the widespread notion of the broad scope of political appointments in Argentina, they refute the conventional hypothesis of a state thoroughly colonized by parties Overall, the results suggest that parties’ distribution of public jobs in the Argentine federal state is oriented less to mass-style patronage than to gaining effective and broad control over state institutions
	 Resumen: Los estudios sobre la administracion publica argentina suelen destacar la debilidad de las burocracias estatales Sobre esta base, resulta habitual encontrar trabajos academicos en los que el numero de empleos publicos se asimila al numero de casos de patronazgo De este modo se ha desatendido la cuestion crucial del alcance de las designaciones efectivamente bajo control de los partidos politicos Este articulo se vale de una metodologia novedosa para medir la extension del patronazgo partidario, estableciendo donde, cuan profundamente, y con que extension los partidos penetran las estructuras del estado federal argentino Mientras por un lado los resultados confirman la nocion de un amplio alcance de las designaciones politicas en Argentina, ellos tambien refutan la hipotesis convencional de un estado completamente colonizado por los partidos Los resultados sugieren finalmente que la asignacion de empleos por parte de los partidos en el estado federal argentino esta menos orientada a un patronazgo de masas que a lograr un control amplio y efectivo sobre las instituciones estatales

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The Contours of Party Patronage in Argentina

This article contends that intra-party dynamics based on particularistic exchanges constitute a double-edged sword for a political system. On the one hand, they provide party leaders with strategic flexibility, which can be essential for their party stability and for the governability of the political system. On the other hand, in permitting office holders to switch policies whenever they consider fit, these dynamics render governments unpredictable and unaccountable in partisan terms, thus debasing the quality of democratic representation. The hypothesis is illustrated by recent Argentine political development.

Machine Politics and Democracy: The Deinstitutionalization of the Argentine Party System

This study makes the following contributions to the study of the politics of patronage appointments in Latin America: Conceptually it adopts Kopecký, Scherlis, and Spirova’s (2008) distinction between clientelistic and nonclientelistic types of patronage politics and widens these authors classification of patrons’ motivations for making appointments, specifically as a lens for the study of patronage practices within Latin America’s presidentialist regimes. Analytically, it sets up a new taxonomy of patronage appointments based on the roles that appointees’ play vis-a-vis the executive, the ruling party, and the public administration – one that can be used for the comparative study of the politics of patronage. Empirically, it applies this taxonomy to a pilot study of the politics of patronage in Argentina and Uruguay under two left-of-center administrations. Theoretically, it contributes to theory-building by relating the findings of our research to the differences in party systems and presidential powers within the two countries under study, and to agency factors associated with the respective governments’ own political projects. The article concludes that differences in patronage practices are a manifestation of two variant forms of exercising governmental power: a hyper-presidentialist, populist one in Argentina and a party-centered, social-democratic one in Uruguay.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1866802X1801000303

Gerardo Scherlis

Papers

Party Patronage in Contemporary Europe

Party patronage in contemporary democracies. Results from an expert survey in 22 countries from five regions

The Contours of Party Patronage in Argentina

Machine Politics and Democracy: The Deinstitutionalization of the Argentine Party System

Unpacking Patronage: The Politics of Patronage Appointments in Argentina's and Uruguay's Central Public Administrations: