How is capriciousness and private and party interest minimised in the administration of government? This paper suggests that the answer is ‘slowly and gradually’. It examines efforts to introduce neutral, stable civil services in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile, noting that patronage persists after laws on career civil service reform have been passed. Implementation (and the political negotiation involved), not law, determines the persistence of patronage and shapes the characteristics of emergent career services. Reforms are caught in an ongoing political process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. It is likely to be slowly, incrementally, and adaptively that patronage systems will eventually be supplanted by career civil service systems. Expectations about what career civil service systems can achieve need to be moderated.
Patronage, the discretionary allocation of public sector jobs to reward followers, continues to be a dominant way in which government is staffed in most Latin American countries. Electoral and party support-building are the reasons most often given for the widespread use of patronage. The distribution of jobs can mean more votes or can be used to pay off political obligations after an election. At times politicians have used patronage to effect policy reform and improved government performance by bringing in highly qualified technocrats or people who share commitment to new policy agendas. The use of patronage can also be a means to personal enrichment through corruption.
Despite the utility of patronage systems, all major countries in Latin America have legislation establishing a formal civil service system. The fatal weakness of patronage systems is not that they inevitably lead to incompetence but that they are capricious, subject to the whims of those who manage them. Civil service systems are designed to end capriciousness with regularised rules about recruitment and career development.
Recent histories of reform initiatives in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile suggest that how effectively a new system works is a function of the political conflicts and compromises that emerge around its implementation. Those wishing to maintain discretion in public sector hiring in these countries have adopted a series of similar strategies to halt or constrain the application of civil service laws. These strategies include:
- Bringing in ‘their people’ through temporary appointments or as advisers who serve at the pleasure of their bosses.
- Creating parallel organisations, with special hiring codes and salaries, to staff state-owned enterprises and agencies not subject to regular personnel rules.
- Bringing in additional and contract employees to create special ‘islands’ with their own personnel regulations and codes.
- Setting up executive and implementing units for special programmes.
However, this pervasive undermining of the system by those who benefit from patronage does not mean that the civil service reforms in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile are failures. The histories of civil service systems indicate slow and halting progress rather than all-or-nothing reform success and failure. This results in a protracted period of co-existence between patronage and career systems. Further:
- Civil service systems do not always mean better or more responsive government: merit hiring is not the only measure of improvement. Assessments of public sector efficiency and capacity are also needed.
- Over the longer term, procedures for ensuring a more neutral and stable public service in Latin America have gained ground, although not always through the development of full civil service systems.
- The degree of competence and professionalism in government has also increased. Even where patronage has continued to flourish, it can, at times, infuse government with more professional and competent management.
- The level of education among middle- and upper-level public officials has improved, with large proportions of public officials now boasting higher education.
