Presidential Patronage and Executive Branch Appointments, 1925–1959

Abstract

We study presidential patronage as a form of distributive politics. To do so, we introduce comprehensive data on supervisory personnel in the executive branch between 1925 and 1959 and link each bureaucrat to the congressional representative from their home district. We identify testable hypotheses regarding the impact of electoral considerations, partisanship, and legislative support on the distribution of bureaucratic appointments across districts. Results from a variety of fi xed-effects estimation strategies are consistent with several forms of presidential patronage. Our results provide initial evidence about the mechanisms through which patronage appointments are administered in the executive branch and illustrate how presidential politics affects the composition of the federal government.