Patron States: The Decline of Clientelism in the United States and Britain

Abstract

Why do political parties reduce clientelistic strategies and adopt programmatic competition? While nineteenth-century political parties competed using a variety of clientelistic strategies, the period of 1870--1920 in the United States and Britain saw a transition to programmatic politics. This dissertation tests a theory of business preferences and clientelism by examining outcomes in three arenas: electoral politics, resource distribution, and bureaucratic patronage. It finds that the rise of managerial capitalism, the establishment of national business organizations, and the increasing costs of clientelism to economic development led businesses to push for programmatic reforms.