Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Like the US federal system of which it is a part, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico formally has a merit-based personnel system, with elaborate civil service laws and regulations meant to uphold merit as the main criterion in public personnel management. Although in place for more than 100 years, Puerto Rico’s merit-based civil service system still does not function to uphold merit as officially intended. Patronage, or the disbursement of public resources or benefits in exchange for political support, is a normal and routine part of governing in Puerto Rico. Based on the analysis of 24 in-depth interviews of public-sector employees and the analysis of 50 political discrimination cases selected at random, this paper shows how a patronage system subsists and works within a formally merit-based civil service system.

Although federal and state protections lessen the possibility of large-scale dismissals based on political affiliation, public employees are still managed with political affiliation as one of the main qualifiers. As political parties cycle in and out of power, the work conditions and career possibilities of the public employees affiliated with (or perceived to be affiliated with) the party change in tandem with their parties’ status. When a party is in power, its members are viewed as insiders, and have greater possibilities of experiencing or obtaining positive work conditions. When a party is out-of-power, its members are viewed, just as their party, as outsiders, and are more likely to experience negative changes to their work conditions, including political discrimination and politically-motivated harassment.

This paper models patronage as a system of insiders and outsiders, and the experience of patronage as a cycle. In this way it moves away from models that portray patronage systems as composed of pyramidal structures and as sustained by three mechanisms: ties of loyalty and reciprocity,[1] fear of punishment,[2] or alignment of interests.[3]This paper shows how patronage is normalized and reinforced as public employees go through alternating and repetitive cycles of being benefited or punished by the system, and suggests a fourth mechanism by which patronage self-perpetuates that lies precisely in this cyclical experience. Ultimately, the paper shows how patronage can exist alongside and even through the reforms instituted by the merit-based system.