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 som e elites at the expense of those who occupy disadvantaged positions in local patronage networks, inclining the latter to resist. This mechan ism accounts for patterns of elite participation in the Whiskey Rebell ion of 1794, a mass mobilization against state building in the postrev olutionary United States. Elites without patronage ties, and those who se clienteles overlapped with those of federal officers, were more lik ely to mobilize against the state.