Patronage as behavioural localism: How turnover of public servants is explained by incumbents' and voters' preferences on territorial representation

Recent literature on friends-and-neighbors voting focused on explaining citizens' motives behind disproportionally supporting local candidates; advocates of the cue-based account suggested that local ties signal accountability, constituency service orientation and policy representation. This paper argues that voters formulate expectations about politicians' future behavior concerning hiring decisions with respect to municipal and state jobs based on the local roots these candidates' possess. Drawing on survey experiments (N=1000) in Hungary, the study shows that politicians appointing (or influencing the appointment of) people from their hometown is a form of behavioral localism, expected by voters. A vignette experiment demonstrates that when local politicians are elected as MPs (as opposed to carpetbaggers), respondents find it more likely that applicants who have shared local roots with the politician will be able to obtain jobs in the public sector, even if they lack the necessary qualifications for the position. Furthermore, a choice-based conjoint experiment suggests that respondents themselves are more willing to fire non-local employees, public servants' local ties (or lack thereof) having comparable effect sizes on the likelihood of getting fired to being co/out-partisans of survey takers. Respondents also believe that their stated preferences, revealed during the conjoint experiment, reflect the behavior of real-world top bureaucrats. These findings refine our understanding on patronage as behavioral localism, as well as voters' expectations about likely non-programmatic behavior of elected candidates.