The political logics of patronage : uses and abuses of government jobs in Brazil

The political appointment of bureaucrats (or patronage, for short) is a major resource for politicians all around the world. While scholars have long studied patronage, we lack a detailed understanding of how politicians target public employment and how that affects governance and public service delivery. This dissertation contributes to fill this gap. I identify five distinct rationales that drive politicians' use of government jobs: managing bureaucrats (to deliver public services or to extract rents), mobilizing voters, rewarding supporters, tying the opponent's hands, and anchoring coalitions. Each of these political logics of patronage has a different rationale, distinct employment patterns, and divergent effects on governance and service delivery.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Toral, Guillermo,Ph. D.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ben Ross Schneider.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128632

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128632