Tuesday, June 25, 2013
D1.18B (Oudemanhuispoort)
Comparative studies of quality of government (e.g. low levels of corruption, high levels of impartiality in public service delivery) are heavily geared towards factors dealing with the selection and incentives of policymakers in the state. That is, the focus is on comparing political institutions – e.g. regime type, electoral systems, veto players. With few exceptions, the selection and incentives of state actors in charge of implementing policies have been neglected in most comparative literature on quality of government. And, in turn, the few studies that take these bureaucratic features into account – mostly from highly specialized public administration scholars – do not control for political institutions. This article aims at bridging this gap by analyzing an original dataset on bureaucratic structure (e.g. up to which extent the administration of a country fulfills the ideal of a Weberian bureaucracy) from a survey answered by over 1000 experts from over 100 countries. Two major empirical findings stand out. First, from a positive perspective, we show which particular bureaucratic characteristics do matter for increasing quality of government – in particular, a merit-based recruitment and promotion within the public administration. Second, from a negative point of view, we show that other allegedly relevant features in the public administration literature – e.g. the existence of competitive exams to join the civil service or special employment laws for public employees – do not seem to have a significant impact on cross-country indicators of quality of government. We discuss the theoretical mechanisms that could be driving both empirical results.
