Patron-Client Ties, State Centralization, and the Whiskey Rebellion

Patronage is recognized in the literature on state formation as a tool used to co-opt elite adversaries. But the focus on economic bases of elite opposition has obscured a second issue: co-optation benefits some elites at the expense of those who occupy disadvantaged positions in local patronage networks, inclining the latter to resist. This mechanism accounts for patterns of elite participation in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, a mass mobilization against state building in the postrevolutionary United States. Elites without patronage ties, and those whose clienteles overlapped with those of federal officers, were more likely to mobilize against the state.