Jobs for the Boys

Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective

Merilee S. Grindle

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English

Harvard University Press
11 June 2012

Comparative politics; Personnel & human resources management; Civil service & public sector

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 looks at the histories of public sector reform in six developed countries and compares them with contemporary struggles for reform in four Latin American countries. A historical, case-based approach allows her to take into account contextual differences between countries as well as to identify cycles that govern reform across the board. As a rule, she finds, transition to merit-based systems involves years and sometimes decades of conflict and compromise with supporters of patronage, as new systems of public service are politically constructed. Becoming aware of the limitations of public sector reform, Grindle hopes, will temper expectations for institutional change now being undertaken.

By: Merilee S. Grindle
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 666g
ISBN: 9780674065703
ISBN 10: 0674065700
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 11 June 2012
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Professional & Vocational , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Merilee Grindle is the Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Emerita, at Harvard University and the former director of its David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She served as president of the Latin American Studies Association and has written or contributed to over a dozen scholarly books.

Reviews for Jobs for the Boys: Patronage and the State in Comparative Perspective

An outstanding book, highly original in its creation of a new interface between the historical-institutional literature on now- developed countries and the almost completely separate world of the development literature.--Judith Tendler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology