Public service reforms and clientelism: Explaining variation of service delivery modes in croatian social policy*

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the differences in outcomes of social services reform in Croatia during the previous two decades. While the service management reform was based on the principles of effectiveness, efficiency and participation in one segment of social services, in the other segment, reform was used for the development of partisan patronage networks. Using the comparable case strategy, the article focuses on six social services and relies on interviews with policy actors and official documents to map and explain different reform outcomes. The article identifies two factors that led to differences in provision of reformed social services and affected the capacity of the patronage-driven political executive to use reform as an instrument of politicized allocation of public jobs. A sufficiently institutionalized setting in which services were provided prior to the reform reduces the ability of political parties to integrate political patronage into service management. In the case of minimal or non-existent institutional setting, the presence of empowered or represented beneficiaries acts as the bulwark against political capture.