Patronage - Good for Politics, Bad for Administration

According to an article in the Washington Post this week, a politics professor, David E. Lewis, looked at the Bush administration, comparing agencies run by political appointees and those run by career bureaucrats. Although the appointees tended to be better educated and very successful in the private sector, the agencies run by career bureaucrats showed "better strategic planning, program design, financial oversight -- and results." Lewis used the Bush administration's own evaluation system.

Patronage is a valuable political tool, but it is not a very good administrative tool. Patronage not only rewards people who don't know much about government administration, it also rewards loyalty and ideology, two of the worst characteristics to bring to government administration, because they both require action by subordinates that has nothing to do with effectiveness, efficiency, or transparency. And, of course, patronage makes people think government is cronyism, benefitting the personal interests of those in power over the public interest