When are Patronage Jobs too Many? Party Leadership Competition and Its E¤ects on Clientelism in the Case of

Brusco, Suraj Jacob and the conference and workshop participants. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0318036. I am grateful to the \u85nancial support provided by the NSF and Tinker fellowships. This paper examines the e¤ect of intra-party competition on patronage. In countries that moved from state-oriented economic development to neo-liberalism, politicians have adapted their clientelistic networks to the new socio-economic context. In order to make more e ¢ cient use of patronage jobs, they now distribute them to their own party members. This forces them to consider their interaction with their party leader when making their decision on how many patronage jobs to distribute. If politicians are dependent on their party (leader)s support and if the party leadership position is contested, politicians give up patronage in order not to lose their party (leader)s support. Therefore, in contrast to inter-party competition that has been argued to increase patronage, the fact that party members depend on each other for their own success provides opportunities for intra-party competition to limit patronage. The statistical analysis of public employment across Argentine provinces supports these expectations. 2 When are Patronage Jobs too Many? Party Leadership Competition and Its E¤ects on Clientelism in the Case of Argentina (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