The contemporary literature on political parties has identified their gradual but
consistent shift away from civil society and towards the state. As parties are
becoming ever increasingly dependent on state resources and exclusively
interested in governing, as Mair (Ruling the void: The hollowing of western
democracy [Verso Books, 2013]) suggested, and patronage is a fundamental
to that relationship, the degree and modes of party patronage becomes
pivotal to understanding their performance, and the ways they organize and
govern. In this paper we argue that party patronage is likely to be structured
by the nature of political competition and explore the effects of political
polarization, which is a feature of political competition relatively independent
from the precise format of a party system, on patronage practices. We
advance a theoretical argument which systematically links different types of
political polarization with different patterns of party patronage, arguing that
extreme polarization incentivizes political parties to develop heavily partisan
strategies of party patronage which, in turn, further fuel political polarization.
Thus, we also contribute to burgeoning literature on political polarization
and its negative effects on the functioning of both political parties and
overall political systems.
