While most democratic governments include some political appointees at the top of agencies for the sake of bureaucratic accountability, too much patronage decreases government performance. Puerto Rico has all of the components for a robust merit system on paper, but it is consistently undermined, with significant negative consequences for public employees. Based on an inductive analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with public employees and 50 political discrimination court cases, this article shows how an informal patronage system is implemented by incorporating political information into personnel decisions. The pervasiveness of this system results in employees being categorized as either insiders or outsiders, where outsider status is accompanied by harassment, ostracizing, and other negative changes in working conditions. These shifts in status sustain patronage practices by crystalizing political identity, which increases partisan polarization, and provides a rationale and justification for future politically discriminatory actions.

尽管大多数民主政府为了官僚问责制在机构的高层都任命了一些政治任命，但过多的光顾会降低政府的绩效。波多黎各在纸面上拥有健全的绩效体系的所有组成部分，但始终遭到破坏，对公职人员造成严重的负面影响。在对29个对公职人员的深入采访和50个政治歧视法院案件的归纳分析的基础上，本文显示了如何通过将政治信息纳入人事决定来实施非正式的赞助系统。该系统的普遍性导致员工被归类为内部人员或外部人员，在这种情况下，外部人员的身份伴随着骚扰，排斥和其他工作条件的负面变化。