Who Delivers? Partisan Clients in the Argentine Electoral Market

TLDR: In this article, the authors analyze the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others, focusing on political parties' access to resources and voters' dependence on fiscal largesse.

Abstract: Why do some parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork-ridden political systems? This article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others. We explain such differences by focusing on political parties’ access to resources (supply side) and voters’ dependence on fiscal largesse (demand side). We show how these differences affect the patron’s choice of public sector wages and employment. We use subnational level data to show different electoral returns from patronage for the two major political coalitions in Argentina—Peronism and the UCR-Alianza—and their effect on preferences over public sector wages and employment. W hy do some political parties fail to benefit from patronage in pork-ridden political systems? This article analyzes the interaction between patronage and partisanship to explain why some incumbents are more likely to benefit from pork politics than others. We explain returns to patronage by highlighting differences in the political parties’ access to resources (supply side) and the voter’s dependence on public sector jobs (demand side). We propose that, just as political parties cater their policies to particular groups of voters, they pursue different strategies when allocating pork in exchange for support. On the supply side, we highlight the importance of partisan biases in the fiscal and electoral institutions that regulate the access and distribution of public resources. On the demand side, we show that patronage is a distributive mechanism that provides different returns to voters with different skills and labor market expectations.