Striped Pants versus Fat Cats: Ambassadorial Performance of Career Diplomats and Political Appointees

Haglund, Evan T.

doi:10.1111/psq.12223

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…We ultimately wish to revalorize diplomatic elites as loci to examine state bureaucracies, a scholarly blindspot few have bridged (Haglund, 2015), especially in non-democratic setups (Ekman, 2013).…”

Section: Case Selection: Postrevolutionary Iran's Diplomatic Corpsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating public service bargains in postrevolutionary times: The case of Iran's diplomatic corps

Beaud

2022

Governance

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New political regimes stemming from revolutions eventually find themselves confronted with the imperative to build upper bureaucratic apparatuses geared towards facilitating regime stability. This article examines the process of "re-bureaucratization" in the Islamic Republic of Iran, whereby institutions are designed and reworked over time to accommodate distinct features of the reshuffled bureaucratic elite initially incongruous in a deregulated revolutionary environment. Precisely, it examines state institutions established to recruit and train postrevolutionary Iranian diplomats following the purges of state bureaucracies. Relying on qualitative and quantitative data, the article shows how such institutions allowed to outstrip loyalty-driven politico-administrative arrangements that are essentially short-sighted, as once their aim fulfilled-asserting regime elites' control over the state-, they channel policy-making deficiency.Conversely, their very designs craft a "Public Service Bargain" that concomitantly fosters diplomats' loyalty, expertise, and representativeness-which, for to the revolutionary canon, commingles diplomats' plebeianization and provincialization-into stabilized institutional arrangements.

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Section: Case Selection: Postrevolutionary Iran's Diplomatic Corpsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating public service bargains in postrevolutionary times: The case of Iran's diplomatic corps

Beaud

2022

Governance

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“…However, despite the potential advantages of political appointee presence, appointees usually have less government management experience and serve shorter tenures, which can lead to directional instability within agencies (Lewis 2008). Although presidents would prefer a combination of loyalty and expertise (Hollibaugh, Horton, and Lewis 2014), increased political appointee presence is associated with lower evaluations for government programs and greater careerist exit (Gallo and Lewis 2011; Gilmour and Lewis 2006; Haglund 2015; Miller 2015; Richardson 2019; Suleiman 2003). Increased political appointee presence is also associated with delays in agency responses to requests for information from members of Congress (Lowande 2019), and longer response times from agencies to FOIA requesters (Wood and Lewis 2017).…”

Section: Politicization and Executive Branch Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Law: Government Transparency and Public Access

Johnson¹

2021

Pres Stud Q

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National governments regularly balance concerns of transparency and access to information against the need for information security and confidentiality. Increased government transparency can inform the public of the reasons underlying government decisions and can promote the participation of outside parties and actors. However, increased transparency can uncover wrongdoing that can lead to embarrassment or legal action against government actors. This project explores the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and analyzes how politicization affects aggregate federal executive branch transparency. Utilizing FOIA initial disposition data across the Bush II and Obama administrations, I find a complex relationship between politicization, as indicated by aggregate appointee presence within an agency, and FOIA requests outcomes. I find that increased politicization is associated with a higher proportion of responses, noting that agencies were not able to locate responsive FOIA records. However, I find less evidence that politicization affects the aggregate amount of information released to requesters from retrieved records.

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“…Distinguishing between the type of appointment is important because not all ambassadors have risen through the bureaucratic ranks of the career service. Political appointments, for example, are well studied in the case of the United States, where they amount for (at least) 25 percent of all ambassadorial appointments (Fedderke and Jett 2017, 385; Haglund 2015, 659; Hollibaugh 2015, 48). Politically sensitive missions may benefit from an ambassador’s closer ties with the chief executive.…”

Section: Theoretical Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Madame President, Madame Ambassador? Women Presidents and Gender Parity in Latin America’s Diplomatic Services

Erlandsen

Hernández-Garza

Schulz

2021

Political Research Quarterly

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This study focuses on the gendered nature of ambassadorial appointments. Analyzing the diplomatic services of ten Latin American countries between 2000 and 2018, we examine the factors that explain the designation of women to ambassadorships. More especially, we are interested in whether the election of women to the presidency in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica had an impact on the gender gap at the top of those countries’ foreign services. Drawing on an original dataset on diplomatic appointments, we show that the presence of women ambassadors has increased only marginally over the past two decades. Furthermore, multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that women presidents on the left have (partially and temporarily) corrected the gender gap in their foreign services through political appointments, provided they had the discretionary powers to do so. Our findings suggest that the impact of women-led presidencies is conditional on the chief executive’s vested interest in gender parity and the scope of presidents’ prerogatives to appoint ambassadors. In so doing, the study contributes to debates on the descriptive underrepresentation of women in executive positions and the gender gap in diplomacy.

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Striped Pants versus Fat Cats: Ambassadorial Performance of Career Diplomats and Political Appointees

Cited by 15 publications

References 26 publications

Negotiating public service bargains in postrevolutionary times: The case of Iran's diplomatic corps

Negotiating public service bargains in postrevolutionary times: The case of Iran's diplomatic corps

The Law: Government Transparency and Public Access

Madame President, Madame Ambassador? Women Presidents and Gender Parity in Latin America’s Diplomatic Services

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