The poor and the less well-off, subject to austerity and exploitation, their "excesses" constantly policed and criminalised, are turned into objects of patronage, grateful canvasses against which the generosity of wealth can be stirringly displayed.
Teachers first won tenure rights across much of the United States early in the 20th century as a safeguard against patronage firings in big cities and interference by narrow-minded school boards in small towns, said Jeffrey Mirel, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan.
With the help of newly appointed Treasury Secretary John C. Spencer, Tyler cleared out an array of officeholders, replacing them with pro-annexation partisans, in a reversal of his former stand against patronage.
Last summer, when Mr Cameron made 45 new peers, there was the beginning of a revolt against the patronage system.
And the mayor, a billionaire who paid for his own campaigns, promised to step up the fight against political patronage.
Fund officials in Ankara this week at least did not walk out, as they did in July in a battle against political patronage in the telecoms industry.
In 1995 Mr Major set up a commissioner for public appointments, albeit with fewer resources than the committee deemed necessary to guard against political patronage.
Ministers and managers, loth to lose their powers of patronage, are also strongly against privatisation.To cap it all, the firms' finances are so sick and murky that they are hard to sell.
Even the construction industry, the major recipient of government largess and the most important cog in the rural patronage machine, has turned against the party as 40percentt of its companies have fallen into bankruptcy over the last decade.
After four years of conservative government, individuals still cannot set patronage of the arts against their tax liability, and the fiscal incentives for corporations are more theoretical than real.According to the Council of Europe, there is proportionately less private cultural sponsorship in Italy than in Germany or Britain, though more than in France.
