![]() | Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective Subjects: Civil service -- Case studies; Public officers -- Selection and appointment -- Case studies; Patronage Political -- Case studies; Civil service reform -- Case studies; Patronage systems in the public service are universally reviled as undemocratic and corrupt. Yet patronage was the prevailing method of staffing government for centuries, and in some countries it still is. In Jobs for the Boys , Merilee Grindle considers why patronage has been so ubiquitous in history and explores the political processes through which it is replaced by merit-based civil service systems. Such reforms are consistently resisted, she finds, because patronage systems, though capricious, offer political executives flexibility to achieve a wide variety of objectives. Grindle Merilee S. : Merilee S. Grindle is Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. |
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