WHEN POLITICIANS ABUSE PATRONAGE

Patronage is all too often a license abused. The rites of political leadership empower politicians to make appointments outside a screening process reserved for the middle and lower ranks of the public service. The practice, while necessary, does not always secure the best and brightest; at times the nod is given to a person on the basis of demonstrated loyalty to the Party in power, or just because they are a friend. That practice is called cronyism.  

Politicians find solace — not that any is needed — in the dictum that patronage, left to bureaucrats, will be afforded the very same standard to which politicians adhere. The argument goes: why should politicians defer such opportunity to bureaucrats when the responsibility and the opportunity is theirs. The argument fails, however, when a generally decent system of meritorious selection is corrupted because the appointees are not up the job or are installed in inappropriate positions.