Intra-party Competition and Clientelism: An Analysis of Public Sec- tor Employment in Argentina and Turkey1

(in all modern parties) there is a continual latent struggle. Every oligarchy is full of suspicion towards those who aspire to enter its ranks, regarding them not simply as eventual heirs but as successors who are ready to supplant them without waiting for a natural death. Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1962 Distribution of public jobs through political patron-client networks has been taking new forms as a result of the political and socio-economic changes in Ar-gentina and Turkey. Earlier social science literature2 predicted that political and economic development and reduction in available public resources in developing democracies such as Argentina and Turkey, would result in the replacement of particularistic relationships such as patronage networks with more universalistic state- citizen relationships. However, in most such countries, violations of equal access to public resources and informal inequality in political rights have per-1An earlier version was presented at the 2005 APSA meeting and the American / Comparativ