Agents or Bosses? Patronage and Intra-Party Politics in Argentina and Turkey

Clientelism in public employment - the practice of offering jobs in return for political favours to a party or politician - is a problem from the perspectives of equality, democratic accountability and economic efficiency. Focusing on intra-party competition, this book presents an original explanation of why some politicians and parties engage more extensively in such practices than others. Examining Argentina and Turkey in a period of economic restructuring, the author argues that patronage jobs are distributed hierarchically to the politicians' circle within the party. Consequently, the distribution of patronage is affected by competition for party leadership. Analysis of original statistical and case study data at the sub national level confirms that clientelistic practices are influenced by party characteristics. Kemahlioglu's research reveals a surprising and counter-intuitive conclusion; that when party support is crucial to politicians' career progression and the leadership of the party is openly contested the proliferation of clientelism is contained and controlled.

"Özge Kemahlioglu's study is a trailblazer moving beyond the partly correct, but woefully incomplete baseline hypothesis that growing economic affluence will erode clientelistic citizen-party linkages. According to her innovative argument, it is the interplay between party leaders and potential challengers inside parties that affects politicians' propensity to dispense patronage. Politicians provide less patronage, when competitiveness in the struggle for elected office is all around them: They need their national party leaders' support to survive electoral challenges. But these leaders themselves perceive electoral challenges that make them suspicious of the loyalty of their followers and not supply support, were the latter to build up grassroots patronage networks. Kemahlioglu's evidence from Argentinean and Turkish regional and metropolitan politics shows this to be particularly important in an era of economic liberalisation with scarcer patronage resources.

The book contributes to the theory of citizen-politician linkage building by focusing on political economy and intra-party organisation. It demonstrates an exemplary research strategy to nest the empirical test of a causal argument with sub-national observations into the geographically, institutionally and culturally very different regime contexts of Argentina and Turkey."

Herbert Kitschelt George V. Allen Professor of International Relations, Department of Political Science, Duke University

"This book deserves to be widely read by scholars and students interested in comparative analysis, clientelism and patronage, electoral and party politics, and public policy making at the local and municipal levels."
Sabri Sayari, Professor of Political Science,
Bahçesehir University, Istanbul