The bureaucratic politics of environmental governance networks

In this paper, I study how patronage—the assignment of public jobs on political grounds—shapes the emergence and dynamics of collaborative governance networks. Patronage has been recognised to have both negative and positive effects on public service delivery depending on the incentives available to political patrons and the political context. However, research on its effect on network modes of governance is still lacking. I provide novel theory and empirical evidence by bridging network governance and bureaucratic politics literature. I argue that the effects of patronage on network emergence depend on where in the organisational hierarchy it occurs. Political appointments at the middle and lower ranks decrease the specialised and technical knowledge and the organisational memory of bureaucracies, reducing the likelihood of establishing ties. In contrast, due to their political resources and incentives, political appointments to managerial positions can increase the likelihood of public agencies engaging in collaborative projects. I substantiate my hypotheses by fitting Exponential Random Graph models to the networks of environmental collaborative agreements among public agencies in Colombia between 2017 and 2023. These results provide new evidence regarding the heterogeneous impacts of public sector politicisation and underscore the often-neglected interactions between traditional bureaucratic issues and the governance structures advocated by contemporary environment policy scholars