The Party is our Livelihood:

Party Patronage in the Middle-Rank Leadership of a Portuguese

Party

(1980-2005)

Diogo Moreira

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa

[Social Sciences Institute, University of Lisbon]

Postal address: Av. Prof. Anibal de Bettencourt, 9, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal

E-mail address: Diogo.Moreira@ics.ul.pt

Telephone number: (+351) 96 254 88 76

&

José Reis Santos

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

[Human and Social Sciences School, New University of Lisbon]

Postal address: Av. de Berna, 26-C, 1069-061 Lisboa, Portugal

E-mail address: zeka1974@netcabo.pt

Telephone number: (+351) 91 666 52 60

Paper Prepared for the 3rd ECPR Joint Session in Nicosia, Cyprus

25-30 April 2006

Workshop: Political Parties and Patronage

Directors: Petr Kopecký & Peter Mair

Draft Version – Please do not cite or distribute without the permission of the

authors!

Introduction: Patronage in Portugal

Recent studies place Portugal as a country where a medium level of party

patronage is present (Muller, 2006: 189). That claim can be deemed sympathetic

as best, since previous studies tended to consider Portugal as one of highest rated

European countries in terms of the extent of patronage in the government-party

relations (Muller, 2000:152). Despite such a reputation, very little academic

production has been dedicated to this thematic, at least relating to contemporary

history. The notable exception is Farelo Lopes article (1998) regarding the

presence of patronage in hospitals and specific public firms. Nevertheless, there is

an overwhelming perception, in all sectors of society, that Portugal is one of the

European countries where patronage relations, of any kind, are more present.

Regarding the patronage style, Portugal is an example of a high level of

majoritarian patronage, since traditionally only government parties have access to

political appointments at the national level. There are some institutional exceptions

(e.g. the national electoral committee), but on the whole the two major parties have

managed to acquire sole control on political appointments. Of course, such an

affirmation must take in consideration the small parties presence in patronage

relations at the local level, specifically the municipal administration and local

quangos. That being said, at the national level, Portugal is among the most

majoritarian in patronage distribution, greatly because from 1985 onwards, only a

single government was a coalition, with all others being single party (either

majority or minority). Thus the small parties absence of patronage resources is

basically the result of their absence of government.

Extent of patronage (Adapted from Muller, 2000:151) low high

NL I FIN GB G F A B PT

Majoritarian and Proportional Patronage (adapted

from Muller 2000:153)

GBG

F

A2BPT

I

A1

SFNL

Majoritarian Proportional

Character of Patronage

Extent of

Patronage

High

Low

However, such a high degree of party patronage doesn’t appear to have spilled

over to cabinet appointments, since Portuguese ministers possess, on the whole, a

high degree of technocratic origins, by comparison with the rest of Europe

(Tavares de Almeida et all, 2002). In the same line, Portugal is considered an

increasing example of “presidentialization of the prime-minister” since, from

1982-to the present, the government’s capability to effectively dictate orders to

their parliamentary supporters tends to destroy any possibility of considering the

government, “hostage” of their party structures (Lobo, 2005). This would lead us,

once again, to internal party struggles and party building as the primary motivation

for party patronage. And, if we are in an era of increasingly reduction of parties’

partisans (Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000), then party patronage maybe one of the few

means of insuring that party membership still is valuable.

Party Building and Patronage Creation in a new Regime

Portugal made its transition to democracy through a military coup in the 25th of

April of 1974. Although the exact nature of the new regime would be an issue until

1976, with the approval of the Constitution and the entry in functions of the first

elected government, from that moment onward the authoritarian restrictions to

party pluralism had disappeared. In fact, in Portugal, as well as many of the new

democracies, the need for the existence of political parties tended to be prior to

their actual existence, leading many to claim that such parties were institutional

rather societal based (Biezen, 2003).

With the exception of the communist party (PCP), who had a long history of

opposition to the authoritarian regime, and had an organization structure that could

rapidly become an organized party, all remaining parties with parliamentary

representation were the result of small groups of highly distinguished individuals,

to which the military revolutionary authorities entrusted governmental positions,

and to which were given in fact the monopoly as “civil society” representatives in

political matters. With the backing of the transitional military authorities, these

parties ran in the first free elections, and given their identification with democracy

and the spirit of the new regime, they overwhelming secured practically all seats in

the Constitutional Assembly that would draft the new constitution, remaining until

now the primary components of the Portuguese party system.

Prior to 1974, the patronage relations in Portugal during the authoritarian regime

could be deemed as state patronage (Lopes, 1998), since in the whole, patronage

appointments were among the principal means for the dictatorship to co-opt

technocratic and economic elites into the framework of its institutional authority.

After the revolution, new types of patronage relationships were immediately

established, involving the new authorities need for control of state apparatus, and

specifically replacing those elements still loyal to the previous regime.

By far, the most important part of such endeavors was the nationalization program

that transferred the bulk of the wealth of previous civilian owners to state hands,

creating an enormous public enterprise sector, that would be the centerpiece of the

great majority of patronage appointments until 1989, when the privatization of

public firms became constitutionally possible, and an ambitious program for

privatization of the bulk of the public economic sector immediately took off.

However, the need for the resources of patronage would imply the need for a new

category of political appointments, which could replace the public sector firms in

the age of privatization. The answer came in the form of quangos, term which here

we utilize to denominate the institutions which have administrative and financial

autonomy from the State, but whose appointment of management is usually a

matter of political expediency. In Portugal, the more general term utilized is

“instituto público” (Public Institute). As we can see from the figure below,

although they existed during the authoritarian regime, the creation of quangos took

a steep increase as of 1986-90, which coincided with the beginning of the

privatization of public sector firms.

Criation of Quangos per time period (Moreira,

2001:71)

2233

19

99

77 78

Prior to

1974

1974-1980 1981-85 1986-90 1991-95 1996-2000

In political terms, this period was also the beginning of the PSD (center-right)

majority governments, which heralded a new period of political stability and

single-party rule. The existence of a party detaining exclusive control of political

appointments for 10 years (1985-1995), inevitably created a vast majoritarian

distortion in patronage appointments, leading to what has been dubbed an “orange

state” during this period (Orange being the color of the PSD).

The situation altered itself in 1995, when the Socialist Party (center-left) won the

elections and formed 2 successive minority governments (the last with a tie in

parliamentary seats). In patronage terms, a great effort was done to replace the

apparatus of the “orange state” by the “pink state”, replacing one party patronage

by another. However, a distinctive alteration occurred in the patronage relations.

Believing that the state administration to be “mined” by elements of the PSD,

which removal would painstaking and publicly costly, an increasing number of the

functions of the state were handed over to quangos created during this period,

which effectively resulted in a “parallel administration” driven by the needs of

political confidence. However, the climate for the tolerance of “jobs for the boys”,

eventually vanished, and in the aftermath of the greatest defeat of the Socialist

Party in local elections (December, 2001), the then Prime-Minister António

Guterres tendered its resignation.

In 2002, the first coalition government in almost 20 years was elected (PSD-PP;

center-right and conservatives), but it would be unable to significantly impact the

patronage resources, considering its short duration. In 2004, in a series of episodes

that started with the appointment of Durão Barroso, then Prime-Minister, to

President of the European Commission, and ended with the lowest level of public

support for a government ever detected in Portugal, the President of the Republic

dissolved the Parliament. In the subsequent elections of 2005, the Socialist Party

won its first parliamentary majority government.

Types of Patronage Appointments

It’s one of our arguments that the type of patronage appointment, specifically its

differentiation, is essential for the understanding of the evolution of the relations

between party, government and patronage appointments. For the purposes of this

study, we focus our attention in six types of political appointments:

1) Cabinet/Junior Ministers

2) Members of Parliament

3) Local Elected Officials

4) Political Appointments to the Civil Service

5) Quangos (national level)

6) Public Sector Firms

The first three categories may seem baffling to some, however if we consider party

patronage to be the political appointment of party militants to positions in the

public or semi-public sector, then all categories above present are, in the end,

viable as objects of patronage relations. Our goal is to contextualize party

patronage as a subset of “office giving” practices, that also include elected

positions, which result not only from party-government relations and institutional

constraints, but also from internal party struggles. Unlike Blondel (2002: 245), we

believe that appointments and party patronage must not be so analytically

differentiated, since from the point of view of the receiver, they serve many of the

same purposes.

In a proportional electoral system, as it occurs in both national and local elections

in Portugal, the bulk of the lists are composed by backbenchers, party members

who in the whole are not known generally to the electorate and whose presence is

neither an asset nor a liability to the party prospects of victory. The media, and

therefore the electorate attention, is drawn to the prospective candidates to Prime-

Minister and certain key figures, leaving the great majority of positions in lists for

Parliament and City Halls in the hands of the “party apparatus”, which treats them

generally as other political appointments.

In order to differentiate between such categories, we should take special attention

to the “necessary conditions” in order to them to be available as patronage

resources: if it’s necessary that the party is in government, or simply as a result of

elections in which the party gains seats. Mueller (2000) calls our attention to the

importance of party-government relations, when a party is in government, in

relation to the control and distribution of patronage appointments.

Appointments Necessary Conditions Government Influence Party Influence

Cabinet/Junior Ministers Party in Government *High (through the Prime-

Minister)

Low

Members of Parliament Results of legislative

elections

Low High

Local Elected Officials Results of local elections Low High

Political Appointments to

the Civil Service

Party in Government High Low

Quangos Party in Government High Low

Public Sector Firms Party in Government High Low

The first category Government/Junior Ministers tends to identify those which are

appointed as members of the government executive. Usually considered the

pinnacle of active political participation, these are the highest ranking political

appointments that any party militant can hope to achieve. In terms of the necessary

conditions, obviously they can only occur when the party is in government.

Relating to party-government relations, the appointment of cabinet/junior

ministers in Portugal has been revealed in practice as almost the sole prerogative

of the party leader (usually the Prime-Minister) with low to practically non-

existent interference by the party apparatus. Thus, personal relations with the

Prime-Minister and other key elements in the government seem more important

that the party career.

Members of Parliament are a different matter altogether. Even if the national

leadership has the power to veto names, usually the appointment of the great

majority of the lists tends to be a result of bargaining between different levels,

organizations and ultimately factions within the party structure. That tends to

emphasize “party life”, that is the historical of a member’s dedication and service

to the party as the primary element of distinction for the appointment to

parliamentary lists, as well as the personal relation to each of the above-mentioned

groups. Nevertheless, there are some characteristics that make this type of

appointment particularly appealing. First of all, it is one of the few patronage

appointments that don’t require party in government in order to be distributed. All

that it is relevant is the share of seats that a party acquires. Adding to that, when a

party is in government, a considerable number of elected deputies, usually the key

figures, assume governmental and other positions, allowing a great number of

lower ranked candidates to assume elected positions.

The third type of appointment, local elected officials, possesses a great deal in

common with the previous category. They are also elected positions, which in this

case depend on the share of votes that the party has in any given local election.

Their difference lies on their almost exclusive dependence of the “party on the

ground” as patronage resource. It is almost exclusively local party organizations

that determine the candidates for local elections, and far and wide, national

leadership tends to have an insignificant role in their appointment, and its efficacy

would be reduced if it even tried. Naturally, their transition for national politics

tends to be difficult, although they many times establish direct patronage relations

at the local level, usually through the appointment to local quangos or the city

administration, which tends to give them great power in local party structures.

By speaking of Political Appointments to the Civil Service, we enter the more

common categories of patronage appointments. In this case, we refer to the

prerogative that government members have to appoint personnel of their own

political confidence to positions in the public administration, usually as auxiliary

personnel in advice positions within the ministries, often as the minister’s private

cabinet. Their most common term in Portugal is “assessor”. However, a distinction

must be made: we are not talking about career officials since, by the Portuguese

Constitution, the career officials of the administrative apparatus of the State cannot

be removed. By contrast, these political appointments tend to serve at the pleasure

of the respective minister, and their term is obviously coincident with the

minister’s term. They are only distributed when the party is in government, but

they tend to be based a lot more on the personal relationship with the members of

the government, since they are not only positions of political confidence, but also

of personal confidence. The influence of the party structure, although difficult to

measure and many times subsumed in the net of personal relations, tends to be

reduced.

Quangos, as has been previously discussed, represent an essential centerpiece in

modern Portuguese party patronage. In this category we include only national level

quangos, since the analysis of local patronage relations is beyond the scope of this

study. This definition encloses a wide range of institutions and groups and many of

which have distinct rules about appointments. For the purposes of our analysis, we

define Quangos as all the institutions which have financial and administrative

autonomy of the civil service, but who are still accountable to government and/or

parliament for their respectable functions. Their primary advantage, over standard

political appointments to the civil service, lies in the fact that many of the quango

appointments have duration of term which, in many cases, is not coincidental with

government terms. That means that many quangos appointments remain in service,

for a considerable length, after their respective party has lost elections. Needless to

say, that makes quangus particularly attractive for patronage relations.

The last category we utilize, public sector firms, refers to the corporations

controlled by the state, or in which it is the larger or significant shareholder. Now,

basically constituted by leftovers of the successive privatizations programs, they

up until 1987-89 represented the primary resource of party patronage. Although

their number and importance has been steadily reducing, they still allow

considerably larger salaries for the appointed, than any other category studied. The

appointments are usually the prerogative of the ministries to which the companies

are accountable, although formally the ministry of finance detains property over all

the state’s shareholding investments. Although traditionally the government , upon

assuming office, did not had the policy of immediately replacing the boards of

public sector firms, that altered itself since the 1990’s, with the governments now

demanding that these boards be of the confidence of the shareholder/s (that is the

government itself).

Sub-National Partisan Organizations: The LUAF Case Study

Now turning ourselves to the empirical component of this study, it is our goal to

try to analysis to what extent is party patronage present in the middle-rank

leadership of a major Portuguese party; if determinate cycles of patronage

relations can be identified over time; and if in fact they are consistent with the

historical evolution of patronage resources in Portugal, specifically on the

evolution of the different types of patronage appointments.

To that effect, we turned our attention to the largest scale of sub-national partisan

organizations, the federation/district organizations, and specifically to the

members of their executive organs. Our choice of the sub-national level of analysis

is based on the excessive and inflexible level of patronage present at the national

level, since invariably the top leadership of governmental parties is always either

directly connected to the state (specially through parliament) and/or has no need

for patronage appointments. It is specially the middle rank leadership, those who

are the future candidates for national leadership, who need to devote full time to

party life in order to climb the hierarchy, but who still have not acquired the

political capital to have patronage appointments as a fait accomplished. Similarly,

the sub-national non-executive organs tend to posses a great deal of elements of

“part-time” partisans rather than party elites, and would also have a low level of

sensibility to patronage cycles.

Our empirical evidence will be constituted by the temporal analysis of the lists for

the Secretariat of the Portuguese Socialist Party’s “Lisbon Urban Area Federation”

(LUAF), the executive organ of the most important sub-national organization in

this party, that has the dual responsibility of representing the party in the most

populous local elections and in the largest electoral district of the legislature (21%

of the mandates). As of 2003, it had 15.4% of the total number of party members,

and over half of it’s members (52.6%) have only joined the party from 1995

onwards (Silva, 2005: 314-315), which was the year the party become government

after 10 years of opposition. This could be an indication of party militancy

reflecting the possibility of attainment of benefits from the condition of party

member.

As may be seen by the figures below, we lack the list data for 1979, 1992, 1994,

1996 e 1998, although we posses some election data for 1979 e 1994. The

methodology utilized was the utilization of the DIGESTO database

(http://www.digesto.gov.pt/digesto2/) in order to cross-reference the elected

members of the LUAF Secretariat for each of these years with the dispatches of

the Diário da República, the official journal of the Portuguese state, in order to

determine whom of those members had been appointed, when, and to what

category of appointment.

TABLE 1 - Socialist Party in Government

Terms of Office Seats in

Parliament

(%)

Prime Minister Form of Government

April 25, 1976 - December 2, 1979 43 Mario Soares One party, minority

April 25, 1983 - October 5, 1985 40 Mario Soares Coalition (PS - PSD)

October 1, 1995 - October 10, 1999 48 Antonio Guterres One party, minority

October 10, 1999 - March 17, 2002 50 Antonio Guterres One party, ‘”parliamentary tie’’

February 20, 2005 - … 53 José Socrates One party, majority

Note: PS – Socialist Party (center left); PSD – Social Democratic Party (center right)

Since “party in government” is considered to be an essential condition for many of

our patronage appointments, the table above denominates the periods in which the

Socialist Party (PS) was in power. For the period which concern us (1980-2005),

the PS was in government only 3 periods: from 1983-85, in a grand coalition

government with the center-right; from 1995-2002, having replaced the

majoritarian government of Cavaco Silva who had ruled the previous ten years;

and now the first majoritarian government from 2005 onwards.

% of votes of the winning list to the LUAF secretariat

100

52

8882

7571

56

77

57

1979 1981 1984 1986 1988 1990 1994 2000 2003

The chart above displays the competitiveness of the elections for the LUAF

Secretariat (1979 was a single list election), which you may see is low. The

electoral system is indirect and consists of the following: 1) the party members

registered in the LUAF jurisdiction elect, through a proportional system, delegates

to the LUAF Congress; 2) the congressional delegates elect, through a proportional

system, the LUAF’s deliberative organ, “comissão federativa”; 3) That organ

elects, through a plurality system, the winning list for the LUAF Secretariat.

Most of the winning lists have over 70% of the votes, the exceptions being 1984,

1986 e 1990. In general, this symbolizes the bargaining that occurs between the

different factions in dispute, prior to the election itself. This means that a

consensual dimension exists and often has a decisive impact in the LUAF

elections. This strengthens our preposition that more that representing the winning

faction, the LUAF Secretariat would tend to represent part of the middle-rank

leadership of the PS.

Another possible obstacle to our analysis would be a significantly high non-

renewal rate of the elements of the LUAF Secretariat. If the elections tended to

elect the same people over and over, we would be assisting a “close-circuit”

leadership, not in flux over time, and eventually the party patronage relationships

would be an endogenous circle, therefore not sensible to different cycles.

% of LUAF secretariat members who had already been members in previous

secretariats

0

38

8

14 13

0 06

27

1977 1980 1981 1984 1986 1988 1990 2000 2003

As we can see from the chart above, that fear is unfounded. The percentage of

LUAF Secretariat members, in each list, who already exercised such function is

low, having only reached a peak of 38% in 1990. That means that there is a high

rate of fluctuation in those who are elected for the Secretariat of LUAF, which

greatly increases their sensitivity to patronage cycles. However, it should be noted

that we not posses the list data from 1990 to 2000, which would indicate that there

could be a much higher ratio in the 2000 and 2003 lists.

Patronage Cycles

Given what we have written about party patronage in Portugal, and its historical

evolution, we should observe the following patronage cycles:

1) Party Building leading to the progressive creation of a middle-rank

leadership

This is understandable given the history of the Portuguese democratic transition.

As we have said, the PS started as a party created, quite rapidly, from the “top-

down”, and reached government with practically non-existent base organizations.

This should be observable in the early patronage appointments of the LUAF

Secretariat, since some of its members would have to assume a great number of

governmental positions (cabinet/junior ministers), in the absence of other qualified

personnel. With the passing of time, and the results of party building efforts, we

would observe a reduction in the patronage appointments to governmental

positions, which would be replaced by parliamentary positions, symbolizing the

creation if a middle-rank leadership who is not present in government, but it is

already present in parliament.

2) “Party in Government” versus “Party in opposition”

This one is straightforward: in periods in which the PS is in government we should

observe the majority of patronage appointments to be either political appointments

to the civil service, quangos or public sector firms. When it is in opposition, the

majority of appointments should be parliamentary or local elected officials.

3) Temporal Shift in the types of patronage appointments

Finally, we should observe a certain evolution, over time, of the primary patronage

categories. Given the start of the privatization programs in 1987-89, we should

observe from that time onwards a reduction of the importance of public sector

firms and their replacement by quango appointments.

Empirical Findings

As the chart below demonstrates, we begin by analyzing the percentage of

members of the Secretariat in each year that didn’t have patronage appointments of

any kind. We must stress once again that the scope of this study was on national

patronage appointments, and specifically on the six categories previously outlined,

therefore other types of appointments, particularly on the local level, are not part

of this data.

That being said, the percentage of members of the Secretariat who had for the

course of their career no patronage appointments at the national level tends to

fluctuate greatly overt time, from an all time low of 0% of the members in 1990 to

a high of 50% in 1981 and 1986. This would indicate a great heterogeneity in the

patronage relations of the members of this organ, leading us to possibly presume,

as far as we can utilizing this data, that the patronage appointments are less given

by institutional reasons, because the recipients are middle-rank party leaders, but

more for personal reasons, because the recipients are whom they are.

Figure 1 - Patronage Appointments in the LUAF Secretariat (1980- 1990)

& (2000-2003)

31%17%

33%17% 14%

22%

60% 53%

46%

33%

33%

33%

71%78%

13%50%

33%50%

14%0%

27%40%

7%

23%

% of members not appointed 23% 50% 33% 50% 14% 0% 27% 40%

% of members w ho w ere only

appointed after the Secretariat

46% 33% 33% 33% 71% 78% 13% 7%

% of members w ho w ere appointed

before or during the Secretariat

31% 17% 33% 17% 14% 22% 60% 53%

1980 1981 1984 1986 1988 1990 2000 2003

This line of reasoning is contradicted, however, by another empirical analysis: the

percentage of persons who are appointed only after their stint in the Secretariat.

From 1980 to 1990, these values tend to vary between 33% and 78%, the latter

value being from the 1990 Secretariat, the last we have data on prior to the largest

term of government of the PS (1995-2002). This would seem to imply that serving

in the Secretariat is a stepping stone for future patronage appointments. The low

values of 2000 and 2005 are easily explained by their proximity to the present

time.

Figure 2 - Appointments of LUAF Secretariat members by type (1980-

1990) & (2000-2003)

Cabinet/Junior

Ministers; 16%

Members of

Parliament;

18%

Local Elected

Officials; 4%

Quangos; 20%

Public Sector

Firms; 15%

Political

Appointments in

Civil Service;

27%

Turning above to the viewing of the desegregation of the LUAF’s Secretariat

patronage appointments by type, we see some interesting data. First of all, we are

drawn by the reduced number of local elected officials present (4%). Although we

have claimed that transition to national politics might be difficult for many of

these local candidates, apparently they also have great difficulty in thriving in

middle-rank leadership. The two largest categories of appointments are expectable:

political appointments to the civil service (27%) and quangos (20%). The third

largest type is parliamentary positions (18%); however ministerial office is a close

fourth (16%), ahead of public sector firms (15%). The total number of elected

positions (parliament plus local officials plus ministers) runs at 38%, with the rest

being traditional patronage appointments (62%).

In order to test our hypotheses about patronage cycles, we must analyze the

evolution of the different patronage categories over time. To that effect, we

desegregated our data into three temporal periods: 1980-1985, which includes the

period of government of 1983-85; 1986-1990, in which the party was solely in

opposition and the privatization programs began; and 2000-2005 which includes

the start of the first PS majoritarian government. We consider the appointments

historical of all members before and during their term on the Secretariat, so the

values below are actually the relative weight of each category on the sum of the

historical “patronage careers” of the members.

Figure 3 - Evolution of the Appointment Types of members of the LUAF

Secretariat (before or during term of the secretariat)

Cabinet/Junior Ministers 30% 19% 5%

Members of Parliament 4% 12% 31%

Local Elected Officials 6% 2% 4%

Elected Officials (sum of previous 3) 40% 33% 40%

Political Appointments in Civil

Service

24% 19% 36%

Quangos 22% 37% 6%

Public Sector Firms 14% 11% 18%

1980-1985 1986-1990 2000-2005

By looking at the chart above, we are surprised by the huge weight of ministerial

appointments in the first period analyzed (30%), in which they are the largest

category. From there on we see a steep reduction until it reaches the second lowest

category (5%) in 2000-2005. The evolution of parliamentary appointments is

exactly the reverse, it starts as a negligible quantity and has a steady chorological

increase until it reaches second place in the last period. This would indicate that

our belief over the effects of party building over time, transforming the LUAF

Secretariat from a repository of party elite to a middle-rank leadership to be

correct. The evolution of the political appointments to the civil service may even

corroborate this, since they become the largest category of appointments when the

party is in government.

However, three categories seem to have behaviors not consistent with our

hypotheses: the Quangos, the public sector firms and the local elected officials.

Our assumption, under the government versus opposition cycle, would be a

general reduction of traditional patronage appointments when the party is in

opposition, counterbalanced by an increase of the weight of elected positions

(parliament and local) during this period. Simultaneously, under the historical

evolution of patronage types, we should observe a reduction of public sector firms

over time, and a correspondent increase in quango appointments. This is not what

we observe.

Appointments of local elected officials tend to diminish, during the party’s

absence of government, which is the contrary of what we theorized, although they

remain always a negligible category. The evolution of quangos seems to be the

most damaging to our theory, since the number of quangos appointments actually

increases dramatically during the party’s absence of government, and then drops to

reduced levels during the latest period. This could be explained by the non-

coincidental terms between quangos and governments, which would lead to

actually a continuation of the PS partisans in quangos, after the party lost

government, and an added difficulty in occupying those positions after it regains

government.

The evolution of public sector firms is also difficult to explain, since it actually

gains considerable weight on the patronage appointments in 2000-2005, by

comparison with the previous government period (1980-85). Despite the great

reduction in the number of public sector firms, after the privatization programs,

they still appear to be an essential part of party patronage relations in Portugal,

remaining the third highest category of appointments.

Preliminary Bibliography

Biezen, Ingrid van, (2003), Political Parties in New Democracies, NY, Palgrave.

Blondel, Jean, (2002), “Party Government, Patronage, and Party Decline in

Western Europe” in Gunther, Richard, José Ramón Montero, and Juan J. Linz

(eds.). Political Parties - Old Concepts and New Challenges. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Dalton, Russell J. and Martin Watternberg, eds., (2000). Parties Without

Partisans, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Lobo, Marina Costa (2005), Governar em Democracia, Lisboa, Imprensa das

Ciências Sociais.

Lopes, Fernando Farelo, (1997), “Partisanship and Political Clientelism in

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