Political Crisis in Central Government and Bureaucrats’ Responses in Provincial Government: The Impact of Governors’ Characteristics

Abstract

Scholars have debated the question of what influences bureaucrats’ policy implementation in provincial government, some taking the top-down and some the bottom-up approaches. However, less well understood in this debate is the impact of governors’ characteristics, particularly at a time of national political crisis. Given that their roles have been proven important for the performance of provincial governments, this is a significant oversight. To fill this gap, we examine the effect of governors’ political characteristics on provincial bureaucrats’ responses to the center by leveraging a unique setting, that of presidential impeachment in South Korea. Using original survey data on 655 civil servants from all 17 provincial governments, gathered as part of a representative survey, we find that bureaucrats are less responsive to the central government after impeachment. Our results show that this difference between pre- and post-impeachment is driven by several political characteristics, such as governors’ political ideology and tenure in office. Our findings have implications for the role of governors in intergovernmental relations and the management of provincial governments’ performance.

Circling the Wagons: How Perceived Injustice Increases Female Bureaucrats’ Support for Female Political Leaders

“…This problem may be exacerbated in South Korea, which has a rigidly hierarchical structure. List experiments, therefore, are likely to be more appropriate in generating comfort in answering the survey among civil servant respondents (see Park and Lee 2021). 5.…”

Public assessments of ministerial leadership in times of national crisis: The case of the pandemic crisis

“…Compared to past research on ministerial leadership conducted in more regular circumstances (Lee et al, 2010; Lee & Park, 2020), which shows that ministers' legislative background is valued for interbranch coordination while ministers' civil service background is more positively assessed for organizational management and policy implementation, 17 our findings suggest that the crisis situations make voters evaluate highly the necessity of government leaders having expert knowledge to handle unusual and unexpected circumstances. At the same time, our analysis is useful for examining the effect of other types of national crisis, such as financial crisis, the lack of political leadership, or other disaster (e.g., Lee & Park, 2021; Park & Lee, 2022). As evidenced by some governments of Western democracies (e.g., Cotta & Verzichelli, 2012), we have seen technocratic cabinets, composed of macroeconomic advisers in the case of financial crisis or other technocrats in that of a natural disaster, being formed based on highly selective functional needs of the country, rather than as a result of political priorities, even in parliamentary governments.…”

Bureaucratic Responsiveness under Dynamic Political Settings: Experimental Evidence from Local Governments

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