(1) At this stage in the argument the double quotation marks denote Korovkin (1988) quoting Theobald (1983), and the singles, Theobald (this note) quoting Korovkin (1988). Korovkin's charge that I provide no evidence for my argument is, to say the least, puzzling since, during the course of presenting it, I cite the work of most of the leading Contibutors to the debate including that of Korovkin's acknowledged mentor, Jeremy Boissevain. See Boissevain, , When the Saints go Marching out: reflections on the decline of patronage in Malta, in Gellner, Ernest and Waterbury, John (eds), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London, Duckworth and Company, 1977), pp. 81–96.Google Scholar

(2) Kenna, Margaret, Institutional and transformational migration and the politics of community. Greek internal migrants and their migrants' association in Athens, Archives européennes de sociologie, XXIV (1983), 263–287CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sylla, Lanciné, Genèse et fonctionnement de l'État clientéliste en Côte d'Ivoire, Archives européennes de sociologie, XXVI (1985), 29–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While both of these represent extremely interesting contributions to the debate, since neither deals with a developed capitalist society, it is difficult to see—pace Korovkin—how either relates to my argument.

(3) Here I take Korovkin to mean that arguments supported by their proponent's own fieldwork are more reliable than those which do not contain this ingredient. While this may indeed be the case I cannot see that such fieldwork is a sine qua non of critical discussion. If it were then a vast amount of the literature in sociology and anthropology would therefore be ‘untrustworthy’.

(4) See especially Boissevain (1977), op.cit., Lemarchand, René and Legg, Keith, Political clientelism and development: a preliminary analysis, Comparative Politics, IV (1972), 149–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Scott, James C., Corruption, machine politics and political change, American Political Science Review, LXIII (1960), 1142–1158.Google Scholar

(5) See, for example, Lemarchand and Legg (1972) op. cit., Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973)Google Scholar, and Scott, John, The British Upper Class, in Coates, David, Johnston, Gordon and Bush, Ray (eds.), A Socialist Anatomy of Britain (Oxford, Polity, 1985), pp. 55–75.Google Scholar

(6) This question becomes even more significant when we consider that, for a variety of reasons, not least that they are marginal to the labour force, the poor in industrial societies tend to be uninvolved in or excluded from those structures which are held to play such a vital role in the articulation of needs. For example, in 1982, 7 million of the 17 million blacks in the U.S. were not even registered to vote. See McLellan, Gregor, The Contours of British Politics: representative democracy and social class, in McLellan, Gregor, Held, David and Hall, Stuart (eds.), State and Society in Contemporary Britain (Oxford, Polity, 1984), pp. 241–273.Google Scholar

(7) See especially Weingrod, Alex, Patrons, patronage and political parties, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VII (1968) 2, 377–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On patrimonialism see Roth, Guenther, Personal rulership, patrimonialism and empire-building in the new states, World Politics, XX (1968) 2, 194–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Theobald, Robin, Patrimonialism, World Politics, XXXIV (1982) 4, 448–559.Google Scholar

(8) See especially, Chubb, Judith, The Social Bases of an Urban Political Machine: the Christìan Democrat Party in Palermo, in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Lemarchand, René (eds.), Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (London, Sage, 1981), pp. 57–90Google Scholar; Michael Gilsenan, Against patron-client relations, in Gellner and Waterbury (1977) op. cit., pp. 167–184; and Lehmann, David, Political incorporation vs political stability: the case of the Chilean agrarian reform 1965–1970, Journal of Development Studies, VII (1971) 4, 365–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(9) See, for example, W. Fischer and P. Lundgreen's definition of a modern civil service:

A corps of specially trained examined and appointed men [sic], independent from the political conjuncture, impartial in discharging their services, fully salaried and pensioned by the state and fully employed by it, subject to a hierarchical order in which they move upward according to seniority or merit or a mixture of both.

The Recruitment and Training of Administrative and Technical Personnel, in Tilly, Charles (ed.), The Formation of Nation States in Europe (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 456–561Google Scholar. (This quotation is from page 459).

(10) See especially Lindblom, C. E., The science of ‘muddling through’, Public Administration Review, 19 (1959) 2, 79–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Still muddling, not yet through, Public Administration Review, 39 (1979), 517–526.Google Scholar

(11) Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, Little Brown and Company, 1967).Google Scholar

(12) See especially Bachrach, S. B. and Lawler, E. J., Power and Politics in Organisations (London, Jossey Bass, 1980)Google Scholar, Mintzberg, H., Power In and Around Organisations (Englewood Cliffs N.J., Prentice Hall, 1983)Google Scholar, and Pettigrew, A. M., The Politics of Organisational Decision-making (London, Tavistock, 1973).Google Scholar

(13) See the definition in note 9.

(14) March, J. G. and Olsen, J. P., Ambiguity and Choice in Organisations (Bergen, Universitetsforlaget, 1976)Google Scholar, and Dalton, M., Men Who Manage (New York, John Wiley, 1959).Google Scholar

(15) I do not even touch here upon the complex problem of the apparent insubstantiality of formal organisational structures in underdeveloped societies. However, I have tried to deal with this issue in Theobald, , Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment (London, Macmillan, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(16) See, for example, the distinction made by Burns, T. and Stalker, G. M. between ‘mechanistic’ and ‘organic’ organisational structures: The Management of Innovation (London, Tavistock, 1968).Google ScholarPubMed

(17) See Fatz, Fred E., Autonomy and Organisation: the limits of social control (New York, Random House, 1968).Google Scholar

(18) I do not attempt here to deal with the difficult question of whether ‘patrimonialism’ and ‘corruption’ are synonymous. In Theobald (op. cit. 1990) I have argued that corruption should be seen as a subtype of patrimonialism.

(19) See, for example:

The civic culture-based system of political exchange relationships prevails in ‘clean’ medium-sized towns or suburbs in America or Britain. These communities are ‘clean’ because the political leaders are not bound by reciprocity arrangements with lower-class followers, which the latter could utilize for forcing their styles of competition on the more ‘respectable’ strata.

‘Introduction’ to Heidenheimer, (ed.), Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis (New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1978).Google Scholar

(20) See, for example, Lord Rothschild on recruitment to the U.K. Labour government's ‘thinktank’, the Central Policy Review Staff:

we looked around. I sometimes go to Barbados, and since Dick Ross […] told me he knew a very good man on one of these sugar boards called Hector Hawkins, I made it my business to have a rum punch with him—perhaps two—and I thought Hector was very nice and very good […] Well, then Peter Bowcock was recommended to me by Lord Jellicoe. Kate Mortimer I knew because sha was a contemporary of my daughter Emma's at Oxford […] I think I got hold of William Plowden because his father's rather a friend of mine and I asked his father if he might like it.

Quoted by Martin, R., A Sociology of Power (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 147Google Scholar. See also Robert McNamara when insisting to President J. F. Kennedy on ‘absolute authority’ in his choice of staff at the Department of Defence: ‘It's a very dangerous proposition, hiring people you don't know’. Quoted by Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, Authority and power in bureaucratic and patrimonial administration, World Politics, XXXI (1979), p. 225.Google Scholar

(21) Theobald (1990), op. cit., Ch. 7.

(22) Such tendencies are more apparent in the weaker economies of former imperial and declining imperial powers such as Britain and the United States. On Britain see Riddell, Peter, The Thatcher Government (Oxford, Blackwell, 1985)Google Scholar, especially Chapter three on the politicisation of the civil service: Whitaker, R., Neo-conservatism and the State, in Miliband, R., Panitch, L. and Saville, J. (eds.), The Socialist Register (London, Merlin Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and David S. Broder, Mrs. Thatcher and the erosion of British liberty, The Washington Post (reprinted in The Guardian Weekly, August 6, 1989).