Occupy government: Democracy and the dynamics of personnel decisions and public finances

Barbosa, Klênio; Ferreira, Fernando

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104856

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…For instance, light-touch policy interventions, such as residency requirements stipulating that applicants must reside in the district to which they are applying, may help undermine the dynamics of in-group-out-group competition that give rise to the reported effects. To be clear, the argument presented here does not disputeand is not able to evaluate-the consensus that the merit-based recruitment of civil servants leads to better measures of service delivery, particularly as compared with countries where patronage is rampant (Barbosa and Ferreira 2019;Colonnelli, Prem, and Teso 2020). Instead, my intention is to unearth the costs at which these gains in performance might come in terms of unanticipated attitudinal shifts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Failing the Test: The Countervailing Attitudinal Effects of Civil Service Examinations

Kuipers

2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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I surveyed the universe of recent applicants to the Indonesian civil service to study the effects of high-stakes examinations on political attitudes. Leveraging applicants’ scores on the civil service examination, I employ a regression discontinuity design to compare the attitudes of applicants who narrowly failed with those who narrowly passed. I show that the simple fact of failure on the civil service examination decreased applicants’ belief in the legitimacy of the process and levels of national identification while increasing support for in-group preferentialism. Next, I find that applicants who were offered—and accepted—employment in the civil service reported higher satisfaction with the process, greater amity toward out-groups, and higher national identification. Because more applicants fail than pass, these results suggest that civil service examination outcomes may have unintended consequences for social cohesion—particularly in contexts where successful applicants disproportionately hail from specific ethnic, racial, or religious groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Failing the Test: The Countervailing Attitudinal Effects of Civil Service Examinations

Kuipers

2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Many studies have found that party membership can assure higher incomes, superior well-being ( Lu et al, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ), and other potential benefits ( Yan, 2019 ; Yang & Pamala, 2021 ). Such advantages are collectively labeled “party membership premiums.” Most existing studies have found that party membership premiums could accrue from special positions ( Barbosa & Ferreira, 2023 ), strong working abilities ( Guo & Sun, 2019 ; Li et al, 2007 ), high educational levels ( Ma & Iwasaki, 2021 ; Markussen & Ngo, 2019 ), extensive social networks ( Ivlevs & Hinks, 2018 ; Westfall et al, 2017 ), and rent-seeking ( Chen, 2008 ). Party members can transform their political positions into real returns through such means.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Party membership and self-assessed health: Evidence from the Communist Party of China

Zhang,

Gao

2024

SSM - Population Health

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“…Previous research has documented different real‐world costs due to turnover of bureaucrats ( Iyer and Mani ( 2011 ), Akhtari, Moreira, and Trucco ( 2020 )). There is also evidence on how political turnover affects employment outcomes within and selection into the bureaucracy ( Colonnelli, Prem, and Teso ( 2020 ), Barbosa and Ferreira ( 2019 ), Brassiolo, Estrada, and Fajardo ( 2020 ), Fiva, Geys, Heggedal, and Sørensen ( 2021 ), Xu ( 2018 )). It is important to note, however, that extant work focuses on developing countries, where the bureaucracy may be more suspectible to political interference, even if it is nominally insulated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology and Performance in Public Organizations

Spenkuch

Teso

2023

ECTA

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We combine personnel records of the United States federal bureaucracy from 1997 to 2019 with administrative voter registration data to study how ideological alignment between politicians and bureaucrats affects turnover and performance. We document significant partisan cycles and turnover among political appointees. By contrast, we find no political cycles in the civil service. At any point in time, a sizable share of bureaucrats is ideologically misaligned with their political leaders. We study the performance implications of this misalignment for the case of procurement officers. Exploiting presidential transitions as a source of “within‐bureaucrat” variation in political alignment, we find that procurement contracts overseen by misaligned officers exhibit greater cost overruns and delays. We provide evidence consistent with a general “morale effect,” whereby misaligned bureaucrats are less motivated to pursue the organizational mission. Our results thus help to shed some of the first light on the costs of ideological misalignment within public organizations.

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Occupy government: Democracy and the dynamics of personnel decisions and public finances

Cited by 10 publications

References 73 publications

Failing the Test: The Countervailing Attitudinal Effects of Civil Service Examinations

Failing the Test: The Countervailing Attitudinal Effects of Civil Service Examinations

Party membership and self-assessed health: Evidence from the Communist Party of China

Ideology and Performance in Public Organizations

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