TY - JOUR
T1 - Short-Term Patronage: Job Uncertainty and Temporary Employment in Politicized Bureaucracies
AU - Quintero, Santiago
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - In this paper, I study the effect of the political assignment of temporary public jobs—referred to here as short-term patronage—on the strategic behavior of temporary employees in developing public administrations. I examine the interplay between job uncertainty and political patronage as determinants of temporary employees’ work effort, operationalized as time allocation to a project. The central argument is that temporary employees strategically adjust their time allocation to mitigate future job uncertainty, and patronage can incentivize increased or reduced effort contingent upon such uncertainty. Using a novel vignette experiment with Colombian public employees, I find that lower job uncertainty can lead to an increase in job effort by temporary employees. Furthermore, when future job uncertainty is lower (higher), patronage can increase (decrease) temporary employees’ time dedication to their tasks. These findings underscore the complex and often unintended consequences of the interaction between employment flexibilization reforms and the political dynamics of public administration, particularly in the context of weakly professionalized bureaucracies.
AB - In this paper, I study the effect of the political assignment of temporary public jobs—referred to here as short-term patronage—on the strategic behavior of temporary employees in developing public administrations. I examine the interplay between job uncertainty and political patronage as determinants of temporary employees’ work effort, operationalized as time allocation to a project. The central argument is that temporary employees strategically adjust their time allocation to mitigate future job uncertainty, and patronage can incentivize increased or reduced effort contingent upon such uncertainty. Using a novel vignette experiment with Colombian public employees, I find that lower job uncertainty can lead to an increase in job effort by temporary employees. Furthermore, when future job uncertainty is lower (higher), patronage can increase (decrease) temporary employees’ time dedication to their tasks. These findings underscore the complex and often unintended consequences of the interaction between employment flexibilization reforms and the political dynamics of public administration, particularly in the context of weakly professionalized bureaucracies.
KW - temporary employment
KW - short-term patronage
KW - job uncertainty
KW - developing public administrations
KW - experiment
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15309576.2024.2445615?scroll=top&needAccess=true
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85214394259&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15309576.2024.2445615
DO - 10.1080/15309576.2024.2445615
M3 - Article
SN - 1530-9576
VL - 48
SP - 373
EP - 407
JO - Public Performance & Management Review
JF - Public Performance & Management Review
IS - 2
ER -
