The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Jan Manuel Cubero Jiménez
October 30, 2026

Political patronage is often discussed as a hiring problem. It is also a public administration problem. The question is not only who gets a government job. It is whether public institutions can preserve professional capacity, institutional memory and administrative continuity when political leadership changes.

This distinction matters in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, where the civil service has long been governed by formal merit protections while also operating within a highly competitive political environment. The central challenge is not to remove politics from public administration. Democratic governments must set priorities, appoint leaders and direct public policy. The challenge is preventing legitimate political direction from becoming partisan control over public administration.

Politics and Public Administration Must Coexist

Public administration does not operate outside politics. Elected officials have the authority and responsibility to establish public policy goals. Public servants then translate those goals into regulations, budgets, contracts, programs and services. Political appointments are therefore not inherently problematic. Governments need trusted advisers and managers who understand and support the incumbent administration’s governing agenda.

But trust and competence should not be treated as substitutes. A political appointee may legitimately be selected because an elected leader trusts that person to carry out their governing agenda. Yet that person must still possess the knowledge, judgment and managerial capacity required to lead a public agency or government program. When trust is valued without sufficient attention to competence, career employees may be required to compensate for weak leadership, organizational morale can deteriorate and public agencies can lose administrative effectiveness. The problem, then, is not politics itself. It is the point at which political loyalty begins to outweigh professional capacity.

Formal Merit Can Coexist With Informal Political Patronage

Puerto Rico has repeatedly attempted to strengthen its administrative system. Act 178 of 2001 restricted partisan political activity by certain officials in sensitive government positions. Act 8 of 2017 reaffirmed merit as a central principle of public human resources management and established the government as a single employer. Act 122 of 2017 sought to reorganize the executive branch, reduce duplication and improve service delivery.

Yet legal reform does not automatically produce administrative reform. Research by Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués and collaborators has documented how formal merit procedures can coexist with informal political practices. Political referrals, perceived political party affiliation and insider-outsider dynamics may influence personnel decisions even when public agencies continue to use job announcements, eligibility lists and interviews. This is what makes modern political patronage difficult to address. It does not always operate outside formal rules. It can operate through them.

The Government of Puerto Rico’s 2025 executive order on government modernization makes this implementation problem especially relevant. The executive order acknowledged that implementation of the 2017 government reorganization law “was not entirely effective.” That admission raises a broader administrative question: Is the main problem a lack of reform or a lack of institutional capacity to sustain reform?

Merit Is an Administrative Capacity Issue

Political patronage is often framed as a fairness problem. That is important, but it is only part of the story. Personnel decisions shape organizational capacity. When political transitions marginalize experienced career employees, public agencies risk losing institutional memory. When career employees believe advancement depends more on political identity than performance, morale and trust can decline. When government fails to develop internal expertise, public agencies may become increasingly dependent on contractors or political appointees for functions that should remain part of the state’s permanent capacity.

A workforce analysis conducted using 2019 Puerto Rico government data identified an aging public workforce, limited succession planning, fragmented human resources information and dependence on political appointees and contractors for some critical functions. Not all of these problems stem from political patronage. Together, however, they demonstrate why civil service reform cannot be separated from workforce planning, leadership development and administrative capacity. Public policy is only as effective as the institutions capable of implementing it.

A More Accountable Merit System

Puerto Rico does not need another declaration that merit matters. The principle is already embedded in law. The next step should be making merit more visible, reviewable and enforceable.

Personnel decisions should leave a complete digital record, including job announcements, candidate evaluations, interviews, selections, transfers and reclassifications. Public agencies should undergo periodic merit audits, particularly during political transitions and major reorganizations. Oversight should also be sufficiently independent to review sensitive personnel decisions without becoming simply another extension of the appointing authority. Finally, workforce and succession planning must become part of civil service reform. Governments cannot preserve institutional capacity if they do not know which skills they have, which skills they are losing and which positions are essential to long-term service delivery.

The broader lesson extends beyond Puerto Rico; politics and public administration will always interact. Democratic governments should change public policy direction when voters demand it, but professional capacity should not have to be rebuilt after every election. Political leadership gives government direction; public administration gives government the capacity to deliver. Effective governance requires both.

Author: Jan Manuel Cubero Jiménez recently earned a Master of Public Administration from the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, with a concentration in Government and Public Policy. He is a 2026 Founders’ Fellow of the American Society for Public Administration and focuses on digital governance, evidence-based public policymaking and strengthening institutional capacity to advance the Sustainable Development Goals in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He can be reached at [email protected].

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