Virginia Oliveros, Patronage at Work: Public Jobs and Political Services in Argentina. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Tables, figures, notes, bibliography, index, 250 pp.; hardcover $110, ebook $88.

Abstract

Clientelism in Argentina is a topic that has received a great deal of attention in the specialized literature. However, an important mechanism has remained understudied: the exchange of public sector jobs for political support. Public employees are an important gear of political machines but have not received the attention they deserve. Studies of Argentine clientelism have focused mainly on punteros; that is, on local party brokers who mediate personal favors between poor voters and politicians (Auyero 2001; Levitsky 2003; Stokes 2005; Calvo and Murillo 2004; Zarazaga 2014). While many punteros are public employees or aspire to be, the two groups are not the same because many punteros do not hold1 a public job. Public employees who received their jobs in exchange for political support are a particular subset within the party machines’ army of campaigners. Oliveros’s book successfully fills the gap by studying how patronage affects electoral competition and the quality of democracy. This fascinating study is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the political activities of midand low-level public employees in Latin America. Oliveros argues that patronage jobs are distributed to supporters in exchange for a wide range of political services—such as helping with campaigns and electoral mobilization— that are essential for attracting and maintaining electoral support. The book makes an important theoretical contribution. While it is clear that public employees provide political services to the politicians who have hired them, it is less clear why they do not renege on such deals after being appointed. They can easily back out of the agreement after getting the job. Following Stokes’s rational inquiry method (2005), Oliveros asks why the deal is sustainable; that is,