Debasement of Merit: The Method and Experience of Political Discrimination by Public Employees in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

Abstract

While most democratic governments include some political appointees at the top of agencies for the sake of bureaucratic accountability, too much patronage decreases government performance. Puerto Rico has all of the components for a robust merit system on paper, but it is consistently undermined, with significant negative consequences for public employees. Based on an inductive analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with public employees and 50 political discrimination court cases, this article shows how an informal patronage system is implemented by incorporating political information into personnel decisions. The pervasiveness of this system results in employees being categorized as either insiders or outsiders, where outsider status is accompanied by harassment, ostracizing, and other negative changes in working conditions. These shifts in status sustain patronage practices by crystalizing political identity, which increases partisan polarization, and provides a rationale and justification for future politically discriminatory actions.

Keywords

job patronage favoritism political discrimination civil service career employees merit

Introduction

Democratic governments include some portion of patronage positions, and the U.S. federal government has a larger proportion of political appointees than most central governments in developed democracies (Lewis, 2008; Maranto, 2005). In democracies, bureaucracies are held accountable by the voters, in part, when elected chief executives make political appointments, and those appointees then direct agency priorities. From the executive’s point of view appointees are both a tool for controlling agencies and a patronage reward (Lewis, 2008). While both patronage and merit appointment have their place, democratic governments require a blended approach. The challenge is to develop the correct balance that provides both for political responsiveness while at the same time leveraging career expertise for effectiveness. Research in the U.S. states finds that government personnel systems largely dominated by merit-based appointment and systems largely dominated by political appointments perform worse than systems with a balance of political executives and career officials (Krause et al., 2006). Similarly, a study of the U.S. federal government finds that increased politicization decreases agency performance (Lewis, 2008).

In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the merit system is off balance. Although modeled after U.S. federal law and in place for more than 100 years, Puerto Rico’s civil service system does not uphold merit as officially intended. The tenured workforce is highly politicized due to informal, long-standing personnel practices in which public employees are politically-managed according to the perceived or actual political affiliation of employees (Colón-González, 2012; Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission [PRCRC], 1992). In this context, illegal personnel practices thrive notwithstanding the numerous laws and constitutional protections that exist to uphold merit and prevent political discrimination.

The scholarship on patronage spans many disciplines. At the individual level, patronage is typically described in terms of the relationships for insiders, or those directly involved in the exchange of political support for public jobs or benefits (e.g., Grindle, 1977, 2012; Oliveros, 2013; Panizza et al., 2019). Micro-level explanations of how patronage is sustained, such as loyalty and reciprocity, monitoring, and interest alignment (Oliveros, 2013) also derive from insider-based dynamics. These explanations do not consider the simultaneous experience of the outsiders or of the individuals who do not get the jobs, who lose their jobs, or whose work conditions are negatively affected because of their perceived or actual political affiliation. These studies also lack consideration of the cumulative experience of being politically-managed that tenured employees in politicized bureaucracies might experience as political parties cycle in and out of power. We argue that by not addressing the outsider experience, nor the shifts in insider-outsider status that employees might experience, the literature is missing an important account of how patronage systems work, which could contribute to a greater understanding of the micro-level mechanisms involved in sustaining patronage practices and making them so intractable.

This study is based on the inductive analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with public employees and 50 political discrimination court cases in Puerto Rico. We analyze the relationship between formal and informal personnel practices, the experience of public employees, and patterns in the way in which public employees, including career employees, are managed, and with what consequences. We find a formal merit system that is subverted to such a degree as to constitute what we refer to as an informal patronage system, in which political affiliation is informally and systemically factored into personnel processes. The pervasiveness of this patronage system, combined with frequent changes in political party control, results in employees being categorized by personnel and managerial practices, as either insiders or outsiders. These shifts in status sustain patronage practices by crystalizing political identity as a basis for group formation and identification, which increases partisan polarization, and provides a rationale and justification for future politically discriminatory actions. We argue that analyzing these dynamics is key for understanding the persistence of illegal patronage practices in highly regulated, but politicized, merit-based civil service systems such as Puerto Rico’s.

Patronage in Personnel Management

Patronage in personnel management refers to recruitment, retention, or dismissal of employees based on partisanship rather than qualifications or merit (Ingraham, 1995; Van Riper, 1958). It is generally offered in exchange for political support, in the form of votes or work on behalf of the party or candidate or in order to gain control over the policy agenda in government agencies (e.g., Peters & Pierre, 2004). To frame the examination of the manner in which patronage is implemented and experienced in Puerto Rico, we begin by considering the research on the fraught relationships between political appointees and career government employees, which is frequently based in the U.S. federal government. Next, we provide an overview of the research documenting how civil service systems are undermined, especially for the sake of patronage. This is followed by a summary of scholarly accounts on how patronage is experienced at the individual level. Importantly, research on the individual experience of patronage often leaves out consideration of those who are excluded because they are viewed as outsiders, not affiliated with the party in power. The layering of an informal patronage system on top of a formal merit system creates conditions for insiders to be rewarded for their loyalty and outsiders to be ostracized.

Dynamics between Political Appointees and Career Officials

Political appointees are one tool used by elected chief executives to both exert control over the bureaucracy and to reward political supporters (Kopecky et al., 2012; Lewis, 2008). It is reasonable for executives to attempt to exert some control over the bureaucracy because power is diffused across various political actors (Aberbach & Rockman, 1988; Heclo, 1977; Ingraham, 1995). More substantively, appointees can bring new ideas into government from the private sector and can help break down policy stovepipes (Maranto, 2005). In comparison, career civil servants, hired based on merit, are supposed to use that expertise to exercise discretion effectively, efficiently, and in accordance with constitutional values (Kaufman, 1956). This knowledge, combined with their long-time horizon, is assumed to position career officials as a source of reliable, accurate, and balanced information for making policy decisions (Krause et al., 2006; Maranto, 2005).

Some newly elected executives come into office with the assumption that career officials will actively seek to undermine the achievement of their agendas. As a result, conflict between political appointees and career officials is inevitable. A key source of conflict is the assumption that career officials hold political or ideological views that conflict with elected officials (Malek Manual, 1974/2003; Maranto, 2005). In fact, career officials are surprisingly responsive to political directives in many different agency settings (e.g., Wood & Waterman, 1991). Furthermore, there is some evidence that the assumption of political distance is exaggerated (Aberbach & Rockman, 2000). On the other hand, career officials do also engage with interest groups and legislative staff within the “sub-government” to subvert, slow down, or co-opt political efforts (Heclo, 1977; O’Leary, 2019). Concerns about subversion often lead to executive appointees seeking ways to work around civil service rules. These “work-arounds” can take a variety of forms, among them, the subversion of merit systems through patronage.

“Working Around” Merit Systems and Enacting Patronage

While personnel management systems are by their very nature designed to constrain managerial action, managers often chafe at these limits and develop “work-arounds” (Ban, 1995; Shafritz, 1973). In the U.S. federal government, the most blatant example of a dysfunctional work-around is Nixon’s Malek Manual (1974/2003), which instructed political appointees to not trust career officials. Key strategies included: “both the layering of appointees on top of existing structures and the replacement of unfriendly career officials with politically chosen executives” (Lewis, 2008, p. 52; see Hamilton, 2010, for similar practices in the after-ban context of Chicago). Sometimes less dysfunctional “work arounds” take the form of implementing the same rules in different ways in different agencies in accordance with agency culture (Ban, 1995).

Subverting merit systems with patronage can be considered an extreme form of “work arounds.” Kopecký et al. (2016) make distinctions among criteria used by decision-makers for selecting personnel, including personal, professional, or political grounds. In major Latin American countries that have passed civil service laws, there persists a disconnect between the formal and the informal system of personnel management (Grindle, 2010). In some countries, the proportion of political appointees to career employees is very high (Grindle, 2010), while in others, merit systems are manipulated and informal personnel practices dominate (e.g., Kearney, 1986). A functional analysis of patronage in Latin America suggests patronage provides flexibility to systems, allowing for significant policy changes, while also making the systems vulnerable to exploitation (Grindle, 2010). To understand the persistence and pervasiveness of patronage practices in subverting merit systems, it is necessary to understand the micro-level dynamics at play, not only dynamics involving insiders, which the literature has centered on, but also those involving outsiders.

Micro-Level Dynamics Sustaining Patronage

Although studied extensively, patronage is almost always analyzed in terms of the beneficial relationships for insiders. According to Oliveros (2013), at a micro-level, the main explanations of how patronage and other clientelistic practices are sustained and perpetuated consider ties of loyalty and reciprocity and fear of punishment. Oliveros proposes a third alternative, interest alignment, that binds individuals to patronage contracts without the need for loyalty nor threat of punishment (Oliveros, 2013).

Loyalty and reciprocity

Patronage relations are argued to be sustained based on the ties of loyalty and reciprocity among systems’ participants and are considered important factors in maintaining patronage networks in public bureaucracies (Freedman, 1988; Grindle, 1977; Oliveros, 2013). Grindle (1977) described how networks based on friendship, trust, and personal loyalty bound public officials and allowed for rapid policy change, problem solving, and career advancement for the network participants. Delving into these dynamics, Panizza et al. (2019) explore the nature of trust between patron and job recipients to understand who holds appointment power and the nature of the political system. The authors’ point of departure is trust as the essence of patronage (p. 150). Dynamics involving those viewed as untrustworthy, that is, those aligned with another party or whose loyalties are unknown, are left unexplored.

Fear of punishment

Monitoring and fear of punishment may also be another mechanism sustaining patronage (Oliveros, 2013). Freedman’s (1988) account of the political machine in Chicago, illustrates loyalists working unceasingly for the machine (bound by reciprocity) and employees who were bound by fear, were not free to express their political preferences and were compelled to work for and give money to machine candidates. Additionally, the fear of losing one’s job or of negative changes to one’s employment conditions provides an incentive for doing political work to keep one’s patron in power (Freedman, 1988; Oliveros, 2013). The effect that fear of punishment and monitoring have on employees is mainly used to explain how the clientelistic exchange, involving insiders, is maintained.

Self-enforcing contracts

Alternatively, the obligation to reciprocate or the threat of punishment may not be necessary for maintaining patronage contracts (Oliveros, 2013). Oliveros argues that patronage jobs are awarded only to those who can commit to providing political services. Recipients of job patronage provide political services after receiving the job when they could have reneged because their interests and the patron’s are powerfully aligned; employees would not be able to maintain their jobs if the patron lost an election. This alignment of interests results in self-enforcing contracts that render unnecessary reciprocity or threat of punishment (Oliveros, 2013). The self-enforcing contract argument partly rests on the insiders’ witnessing, and wanting to avoid, the negative employment changes that they witness outsiders’ experience (Oliveros, 2013).

Although practices directed at outsiders and the outsider perspective are described in some studies (e.g., Cordero-Nieves et al., 2016; Hamilton, 2010), to the best of our knowledge, the experience of the outsider has not been used to explain why and how patronage systems are perpetuated. The experience of the outsider has been considered one of the factors that indirectly sustains the patronage contract in public bureaucracies (e.g., Oliveros, 2013; Ozturk, 2005). Beyond this, however, the exclusionary and discriminatory practices directed toward those out of power receive scarce attention (but see, Cordero-Nieves et al., 2016). This exclusion is conceivably fueled by distrust, prejudice, or notions of political revenge. Negative actions directed toward political outsiders are at the center of political discrimination court cases. To understand a patronage system, both the preferential treatment awarded to insiders and the prejudicial treatment targeting outsiders needs to be understood as inter-related but distinct practices.

The Case of Puerto Rico

The civil service system in Puerto Rico looks like a functioning merit-based civil service system because, formally, all the structures, processes, and tools of a merit system are in place. Nonetheless, informally, Puerto Rico maintains a personnel system with formal structures and processes that are manipulated for, and overridden by, political-partisan considerations (Colón-González, 2012; Cordero-Nieves et al., 2016; PRCRC, 1992). The system in Puerto Rico resembles public personnel management in other Latin American bureaucracies, which are heavily influenced by personal and political relations, preventing the successful implementation of a professionalized civil service (Grindle, 2012).

Puerto Rico is historically identified with Latin America but has operated within a U.S. legal and political framework since 1898. Although under Spanish rule there was no civil service system, 9 years after U.S. occupation, Puerto Rico adopted its first civil service law, the Puerto Rico Civil Service Law of 1907, which was modeled after the U.S. Pendleton Act of 1883 (Colón-González, 2012). On paper Puerto Rico’s bureaucracy is shielded from extreme political management, with a relatively low proportion of political appointees compared to the career work force. In 2019, over 87% of employees in state agencies were in career positions, 11.16% in transitory or irregular positions, and only 1.79% in political appointments (trust positions) (Instituto de Estadísticas de Puerto Rico, 2019).

Puerto Rico is subject to the same federal laws and court decisions limiting patronage and political discrimination as other U.S. States. U.S. Supreme Court rulings such as Elrod v. Burns (1976) and Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois (1990), which prohibit patronage practices for low-level public employees, apply to Puerto Rico. Additional U.S. Supreme Court decisions requiring employees be granted due process prior to removal because of liberty and property interests also are in force. Furthermore, the Hatch Act of 1939, which limits the political activities of executive branch federal employees, applies to the Commonwealth’s state and local government employees whose salary is primarily funded by federal funds. Although a “Little Hatch Act” has been considered by the Commonwealth’s legislature, it has not been passed into law. There are similar Hatch-like provisions for all public servants in P.R.’s 2011 Government Ethics Law; but these are considered insufficient to curb the political activities of public employees (Cámara de Representantes, 2014).

Since the 1970s, the two main parties in Puerto Rico have alternated power at the state level generally every 4 to 8 years. This is generally accompanied by an extensive shifting of personnel and a redistribution of trust, power, resources, and access to members or supporters of the party in power within the bureaucracy. The shifts in personnel during a shift in party control are massive. For example, after the 2008 elections, the Secretary of Justice of the incoming administration ordered an investigation into all personnel transactions in the Executive branch during the July 1, 2008 January 3, 2009 period, and found over 64,000 personnel transactions, which were to be declared null and illegal (Associated Press, 2009; see also Colón-González, 2012). Individuals hired while the opposition party was in control are targeted for layoffs, dismissals, or non-renewal of temporary appointments or contracts (see, Joubert-Vazquez v. Avarez-Rubio, 2011; Acevedo-Diaz v. Aponte, 1993; Nieves-Villanueva v. Soto-Rivera, 1997; Carrasquillo v. Apointe Roque, 1988; Acevedo-Cordero v. Cordero-Santiago, 1991). Other extreme actions, such as dismantling entire units or reorganizing agencies according to where employees of the opposition are concentrated are supported by media reports and court cases (e.g., Gonzalez-Lopez v. Colon-Rondon, 2015).

Nevertheless, the merit system and court rulings do set boundaries; mass dismissals that were common in the initial waves of political discrimination cases have decreased, and employees who several decades ago would have been fired are instead subject to adverse actions and/or changes in the terms and conditions of employment. Judges in the US Courts of Appeals for the First Circuit describe initial waves of political discrimination cases in Puerto Rico in the 1980s involved outright dismissals of employees, while subsequent waves involved a more complicated type of discrimination, consisting of adverse actions “less final and definitive than dismissal,” such as harassment, hostile work environments, stripping of functions, and the sophisticated and subtle manipulation of the civil service processes (Agosto de Feliciano v. Aponte-Roque, 1989; see also, Nieves-Villanueva v. Soto Rivera, 1997). Cordero-Nieves et al. (2016, p. 249) estimate that the annual cost (direct and indirect) in political discrimination cases in P.R. amounts to $19.6 million. Federal and state courts have repeatedly decried the prevalence of these practices and identified the Government of Puerto Rico is one of the leading U.S. jurisdictions in political discrimination cases (Lopez-Quinones v. Puerto Rico Nat. Guard, 2008).¹ As expressed by a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit²:

This circuit leads the nation as one of the most prolific generators of political discrimination cases; in this area of litigation, the District of Puerto Rico has the dubious distinction of being the most fecund district in the circuit. . . . “[I]n Puerto Rico, a change between the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and the New Progressive Party (NPP) [gives rise to] overly zealous political operatives of the prevailing party terminat[ing], demot[ing], or reduc[ing] the salaries of employees affiliated with the outgoing opposition party”) (Lopez-Quinones v. Puerto Rico National Guard, 2008).

The case of Puerto Rico provides us the opportunity of understanding how pervasive illegal patronage practices can subsist within highly regulated civil service systems.

Methodology

To address questions about how illegal personnel practices work within a merit system, how it is experienced by public employees and why it persists, between December 2014 and August 2017 we conducted 29 in-depth interviews with 23 former or current government employees, lasting from 1.5 to 3 hours. There were follow-up interviews with six of the interviewees after the 2016 elections—an election that resulted in a change of political administration within the Commonwealth. The sample included individuals with a great deal of experience in government. Two worked less than 15 years, 15 had worked between 15 and 30 years, and 6 had more than 30 years of experience. All 23 interviewees held career appointments at some point during their careers; of these, 12 also held political appointments, and 6 had done contracting work for government. The sample included individuals in different levels within government: managerial, clerical, and direct service; and that had worked at the state agency level and Municipalities. The two main political parties were represented in the sample: 11 interviewees were affiliated with the pro-Commonwealth Party (PDP), 9 were affiliated with the pro-Statehood Party (NPP), and 3 of the interviewees did not disclose their political affiliation. Interviewees had experience in a total of 13 state agencies (see Appendix A for employee characteristics).

The open-ended interviews centered on interviewees’ experiences of HR and managerial processes, their career trajectories, and on the role of partisan politics in Puerto Rico’s public agencies. The questions probed themes related to personnel practices (formal and informal), awareness and relevance of political affiliation, perceptions or attributed characteristics to members of different and of the same political party, significance of political affiliation as a criterion in the personnel management of career employees, mechanisms or strategies for inclusion of affiliation as a criterion in personnel transactions and other transactions, experiences of partisan favoritism and of discrimination, and expectations of the system.

To complement the interview data, we analyzed 50 randomly selected political discrimination cases in Puerto Rico, which represented 10% of the total political discrimination cases in the Commonwealth in the Westlaw database (as of January 18, 2016). The search was not limited by dates and included both Commonwealth and federal courts cases. Political discrimination cases were those that involved claims of political discrimination or political harassment in personnel management in Puerto Rico’s public sector. Cases refer to the written opinions of lower court and appellate judges, and do not contain the entire case record. The cases do not allow for generalizing regarding the success of the lawsuits given that completeness of records vary, and the resolution for some cases is unclear. Nonetheless, the cases provided a rich record of bureaucratic political dynamics and allowed for confirmation of trends that emerged in interviews.

Interview recordings, interview notes, and case documents were transcribed and coded inductively (Emerson et al., 1995)—open coding of initial concepts was followed by more focused coding. Initial coding focused on formal and informal HR practices, the actors involved in these practices, and the experience of employees. Early in the coding process, the electoral cycle emerged as a distinctive organizer of personnel and managerial processes and of interviewees’ experience. Focused coding resulted in the identification of key personnel practices used to manipulate merit. Additionally, we identified three themes in interviewees’ experiences regarding HR processes: the insider status, the outsider status, and shifts in statuses.

In the next sections we describe the most prevalent formal and informal personnel practices and how through, the manipulation of merit, employees are classified as insiders and outsiders.

Findings

The Manipulation of Merit

The manipulation of merit in Puerto Rico goes far beyond what is reflected in the official proportion of political appointments, and far beyond what is typical in the U.S. federal government. The evidence suggests the simultaneous use of the tools of both the formal merit system and informal patronage system, rigged to favor party-loyalists or politically connected individuals. There are three key practices that are used within the confines of the merit system to benefit members of the party in power (insiders) and to identify members of the opposition party within the career ranks (outsiders). First, personnel file audits are used with the express intent of identifying “outsiders.” Second, political factors are considered simultaneously with merit factors in the hiring process. In part, this is accomplished through a system of political vouching to verify whether someone is aligned with the party in power, through the widespread use of politically-connected individuals known as “palas.” Third, political groups operating within public agencies engage in political surveillance of public employees throughout their tenure (e.g., Franco Figueroa, et al. v. State Insurance Fund Corp, 2012; O’Connell v. Marrero-Recio, 2013).

First, personnel file audits, which are a standard tool for evaluating implementation of merit system rules, are used for explicitly partisan purposes at the beginning of new governments. According to 12 interviewees, human resources professionals, often together with political party operatives and agency political appointees, identify employees of the opposition party through personnel file audits, using the date of hire as a marker of the individual’s political affiliation (e.g., Torres-Heredia, et al. v. Lopez-Pena, et al., 2008). This information is then given to political appointees and trust employees within the agencies, who supervise personnel and make personnel decisions. These personnel audits were consistently mentioned by interviewees and cited in political discrimination cases as preceding adverse personnel actions (e.g., Zambrana v. González, 1998; Febus-Rodriguez v. Questell-Alvarado, 2009). As explained by interviewees, the date of entry serves as a record of the political party that was in control when one enters government service; this is assumed to represent one’s political affiliation regardless of true individual political preference. Future administrations examine these dates of entry and use them as proxies for political affiliation and then confer benefits to “their” members and punishments to non-members. The date of entry influences subsequent career trajectories, and is referred to as being marked or stamped, “el sello.”

Second, individuals must apply for open positions, and an assessment of their qualifications leads to the creation of an eligible list, as is normal under a merit hiring system. Nineteen interviewees stated that even though interviews for the open positions are held, only those with clear political bona fides are offered the position. These interviewees further indicated that, before elections, individuals in non-career trust positions are hired into career positions or trust positions are converted to career positions (referred to as “screwing-in” in Puerto Rico). As a career and former political appointee explained, “the most important task we had before elections was to place as many party-loyalists as it was possible (in career positions) . . . You work with human resources, leave them there, immovable. There is a very big battle over this. . .”

During the job application and promotion process, individuals signal their political affiliation with letters of recommendation from politically connected individuals, or political affiliation is inferred through family members who are politically active. Twenty-one out of 23 interviewees got their government jobs through personal or political connections (“palas”) or someone else’s. All interviewees stated that recruitment processes for civil service positions were influenced by referrals from politicians, politically connected individuals, or were for those who worked for or donated to the campaign. A former trust-employee who participated in personnel recruitment processes, explained how, “the (hiring) panel, everything. . . was fake. The people they chose were the friends of x, the referrals of mayor y. . . they already had the people they were going to select. These practices are very ‘in your face.’ They have no qualms about it.” As a former high-level appointee expressed, “there are very few people entering (public service) if not through politics.”

The phrase “having a first and a last name” was commonly used by interviewees when referring to career positions that were awarded to someone unofficially before carrying out the required civil service processes. After evaluating the formal qualifications of all applicants, the list of those meeting minimum merit-based requirements is assembled into a Registry of Eligibles, as required by personnel rules. As explained by several interviewees who had held supervisory positions, the official list will include candidates from different political parties. The political qualifications of those in the list are integrated into the selection process unofficially to respond to the informal system’s rules (e.g., is the job candidate a known supporter of the party? Does the job candidate’s family militate for the party?). As expressed by a career and former political appointee,

My best employee is one that is ‘de confianza’ (of trust) and ‘confiable’ (reliable). By ‘of trust,’ I mean that they militate in my party. . . that one can talk about everything with them, that they are unconditional to me, that I can rely on them to execute the party’s public policy. . . By “confiable” (reliable), I mean that they get to work on time, that they do not cause problems with other employees. . . . I’d rather leave the (career) position unoccupied than hire a person that, although reliable, is not of trust.

This dual consideration of political and professional qualifications is considered by interviewees with direct knowledge of (or participation in) personnel processes as “standard operating procedure.” In some agencies, the process is completely circumvented, and party affiliates are appointed to interim positions while they gain the required experience to qualify them for the career position. In this way, they can be appointed to the position without competing for it.

Third, political groups work closely with political appointees within agencies and with human resources professionals. The organizations that facilitate political discrimination in Puerto Rico are highly formalized committees of the main political parties—these groups are powerful, and embedded within state agencies and public corporations, and highly involved in personnel-related issues (Cordero-Nieves et al., 2016; see also, O’Connell v. Marrero-Recio, 2013; “Transcripción Vista Pública,” 2016). As a former HR Director explained: “Lists of people. . . to be hired for specific positions would be delivered by party operatives to the Executive Director, who would then send the list to our office. . . . The lists would include the name, address, contact information, and position for the person.” Sometimes, the relationship is more direct and HR officials are members of these political groups (e.g., Peguero-Moronta v. Santiago, 2006).

In over 20% of the court cases, the HR Director or HR officials are among the defendants. In these cases, HR personnel are portrayed as highly partisan political operatives, conducting spurious audits, punishing through the selective enforcement or manipulation of personnel rules, instituting a personnel “policy of political discrimination” with highly charged political environments, and very aggressive actions against outsiders (Acevedo-García v. Monroig, 2000; Sanchez v. Public Building Authority, 2005; Zambrana v. González, 1998). As a career employee explained, “The human resources office is the vital base of that structure. . . to be able to favor the people of their party.”

Experiencing Patronage as Insiders and Outsiders

The pervasiveness of these practices, together with frequent changes in political party control, result in the categorization of employees by personnel and managerial practices, as either insiders or outsiders. Moreover, these statuses are not static. Career employees’ statuses change in tandem with their parties’ in-power or out of power status—shifting from an insider to an outsider status or vice versa, depending on election results. In this section, we present the experience of employees as they experience the shifts in status and how experiencing the outsider status directly contributes to sustaining patronage practices.

Status shifts

Although all interviewees described the increased politicization of the work environment during the election period, the experience of being politically harassed or discriminated against did not touch all interviewees in the same manner, nor at the same time in their careers. Interviewees described some administrations as highly political, they would “scorch everything, cut heads,” fire people on political grounds and substitute them with “their people,” protect “their own,” without even trying to conceal it. As a career employee described, “the agency felt like the headquarters of a political party.” Another described an incoming administration as having a “diabolical political rage.” Other administrations were less political; in these, the discrimination was more subtle—outsiders were not fully trusted, did not generally advance in their careers, but were not mistreated either.

All interviewees uniformly expressed that when they entered public employment, they believed that politics had no place in the workplace, it was a private matter, they did not care about others’ political affiliation, and they expressed a willingness to work with people regardless to which party they belonged. Nonetheless, all interviewees reported being “stamped” with a political affiliation and were managed under this assumption. Thirteen of the interviewees disclosed having suffered extreme political discrimination throughout their time in government. Of these, only three took legal action, and at least three were defendants in political discrimination cases.

Interviewees described feeling bewilderment, and a great sense of loss and betrayal the first time they experienced political discrimination. A career employee described her experience—being stripped of responsibilities, having her office searched, not being included in meetings—as if “an order of distrust had been given against me.” Another career employee who was stripped of all responsibilities, harassed, and whose salary was substantially reduced, explained, “I got clinically depressed. . . I felt, not that they had pulled the rug from under my feet, but that they had pulled the entire floor. . . .” There are examples of this type of discrimination in the cases, of plaintiffs being “maintained idle all day long,” for years (e.g., Sanchez v. Public Building Authority, 2005).

Shifts in status are experienced collectively

Individuals who share the same political mark tend to move through the insider-outsider status shifts together. Experiencing the shift from an insider to an outsider status had enduring effects in the way that employees related to one another. The experience shaped their expectations, transformed their dynamics, and beliefs about each other. It separates them into groups, reinforcing political affiliation as a basis for group formation and identification, and provides them with a rationale and justifications for politically discriminatory actions toward “others.”

When employees witness how those from their group are treated, or they are part of the group that is collectively discriminated against, it becomes an us-them situation. As expressed by the spokesperson of a political group of employees: “Remember, we are living under a government that is persecuting pro-statehooders. . . .You can investigate each of the agencies. . . they are being fired, trampled on, humiliated. . .” (“Servidores públicos estadistas se sienten perseguidos,” El Nuevo Día, 2013). These discriminatory behaviors create collective responses, including collective demands, when back in an insider status. Conceptions of fairness and justice in this organizational culture become subordinate to particularistic, group-related considerations.

When employees shift back to an insider status, they want and expect different things than when they entered public service initially. Experiencing political discrimination contributed to the politicization of interviewees. Interviewees expressed a range of responses to the experience of political discrimination, including general distrust toward their out-group; becoming more active politically; feelings of entitlement or the expectation of benefits when their party is in power; fear of changes in administration; and desire for revenge.

For example, one of the interviewees said that the experience of political discrimination “definitively was what took me to that political dark side. . . that I had not felt before. . . . they messed with my people, so I want to destroy them, bottom line. And I don’t feel bad about it.” Another interviewee, who was harassed and eventually fired because of her perceived political affiliation, expressed that “out of anger” she got into politics: “They thought I was (from the opposition party); so now I am.” Others were left with an enduring sense of distrust toward members of the opposition party. For these interviewees, there was the expectation of discrimination when in an outsider status, “I would be wary of my new supervisors. . .” “I don’t want to go through this again,” “you don’t understand. . . they (the opposition) are evil, evil.”

Furthermore, there are repeated references to how others behaved while in power, to justify interviewees’ own discriminatory or retaliatory behaviors, including demands for punishments from superiors. Depending on their experiences while outsiders, some employees expect pay-back for the poor treatment that they received; they engage in or demand revenge-driven behaviors, which are referred to as “revancha” (which literally means “re-match”). One career employee described revancha as a daily occurrence, “our daily bread.” Interviewees explained that demands for revancha are especially strong in the period immediately following a change in administration. In the words of a former political appointee, “many people want to see blood. When I got to the agency, you can’t imagine the list of people that they had for me to knock their heads off! This is how this works all the time. . . . They (employees) want to get back at the others, for what the others did to them. I am not exempt from it; we all fall into it sometimes.”

These findings suggest that exclusion and distrust are not peripheral, but central to the continuation of patronage practices at the individual and group levels. The insider or outsider status and experiences become cumulative and mutually reinforcing. Employees learn to expect privilege or discrimination depending on their status, and they learn to favor and to discriminate based on political affiliation.

Discussion

This article shows how an informal patronage system is implemented by incorporating political information into personnel decisions, creating cohorts of employees who collectively experience statuses in which they are favored or discriminated against. Favoritism and discrimination are distinct, but interrelated tools of political control, with different binding mechanisms. Politically motivated actions against outsiders trigger dynamics that are qualitatively different from those established by the insider experience. While trust, loyalty, fear of punishment, interest alignment, and hope are mechanisms that sustain insider-based dynamics; simultaneous, exclusion-based dynamics are also at play, binding employees to their out-group through distrust and desire for vengeance. Experiencing the outsider status led to increased politicization of interviewees, leading them to develop or reinforce negative attitudes toward the group in power, while developing or reinforcing identification with an alternative group. By experiencing shifts in statuses, interviewees became bound by both favoritism (to their in-group) and by discrimination (to their out-group), simultaneously.

The informal system of patronage relies on the increased politicization of employees and the concomitant distrust and revenge-driven behaviors to continue. Even when the party representative cannot give, they can take away. Some researchers argue that job patronage is a less than ideal form of patronage; it is expensive, difficult to manage, inflexible, indivisible, and cannot be easily taken away from the recipient (Johnston, 1979). Some of the manifestations of political discrimination can be much subtler and harder to identify and to prove than patronage practices in the form of hiring or firing employees. These practices serve the same purposes regarding political control as job patronage, but are “cheaper,” more flexible, and can potentially render public sector jobs as an inexhaustible source of political patronage, and are used, in this context, as an alternative and complement to the favoritism of job patronage. Personnel and managerial practices deployed in detriment of outsiders serve to appease supporters’ past grievances or desire for retaliation: it is not only the giving of benefits that bind political leaders and public employees together, but the taking away. Distrust is as much the essence of patronage as trust is.

Conclusion and Implications for Research and Practice

The case of Puerto Rico shows how a patronage system can be implemented through personnel processes that are meant to uphold merit. Furthermore, it shows how these personnel processes categorize employees as insiders or outsiders, leading to increased partisan polarization. This case study contributes to understanding the role of partisanship (real and perceived) in the career trajectories of public bureaucrats in politicized bureaucracies. It also identifies some of the mechanisms leading to the politicization of employees through personnel and managerial practices, exhibiting the weaknesses of merit system tools, and their susceptibility to partisan objectives.

Furthermore, this case study suggests that the experience of exclusion and distrust are central to the continuation of patronage practices, and merit further study. By not addressing the experience of outsiders and the dynamics involved in political discrimination, we are missing an important account of how patronage systems work and of the mechanisms that sustain them.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-rop-10.1177_0734371X211014948 – Supplemental material for Debasement of Merit: The Method and Experience of Political Discrimination by Public Employees in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-rop-10.1177_0734371X211014948 for Debasement of Merit: The Method and Experience of Political Discrimination by Public Employees in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico by Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués and Ellen V. Rubin in Review of Public Personnel Administration

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was possible thanks to the University at Albany, Research Fellowship Awards (2016-2017 and 2017-2018), to the Dissertation Award from the Section on Personnel Administration and Labor Relations (SPALR) of the American Society for Public Administration (2018), and to CIDE’s Research Support Fund No. FAI-0920-1423.

ORCID iD

Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biographies

Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués is a research professor at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). Dr. Pérez-Chiqués’ research centers on corruption, public personnel management, and policy implementation.

Ellen V. Rubin is an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. Dr. Rubin’s research focuses on understanding government employee perceptions of fairness. This includes (a) perceptions of procedural justice and organizational outcomes; (b) fair treatment and discrimination; and (c) performance appraisal practices and perceptions of fairness.

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