IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14499.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bureaucrats under Populism

Author

Listed:
  • Morelli, Massimo
  • Sasso, Greg

Abstract

We explore the consequences of populism for bureaucrats’ incentives by analyzing a model of delegated policy-making between politicians and bureaucrats. Populist leaders prefer loyalist bureaucrats over competent ones, and this leads competent bureaucrats to engage in strategic policy-making: they sometimes feign loyalty to the current incumbent; and they sometimes implement the correct policy even at the cost of being fired. We show that feigning loyalty becomes more likely as the probability of a populist-loyalist combination increases. We also show that bureaucratic turnover is higher under populists when the bureaucracy is strong and higher under non-populists when the bureaucracy is weak.

Suggested Citation

  • Morelli, Massimo & Sasso, Greg, 2020. "Bureaucrats under Populism," CEPR Discussion Papers 14499, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14499
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP14499
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ashworth, Scott & Shotts, Kenneth W., 2010. "Does informative media commentary reduce politicians' incentives to pander?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 838-847, December.
    2. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2013. "Rational Ignorance, Elections, and Reform," MPRA Paper 68638, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Dec 2015.
    3. Gabriele Gratton & Luigi Guiso & Claudio Michelacci & Massimo Morelli, 2015. "From Weber to Kafka: Political Activism and the Emergence of an Inefficient Bureaucracy," Working Papers 560, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    4. Guiso, Luigi & Herrera, Helios & Morelli, Massimo & Sonno, Tommaso, 2018. "Global Crises and Populism: the Role of Eurozone Institutions," CEPR Discussion Papers 12944, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Chesterley, Nicholas & Roberti, Paolo, 2018. "Populism and institutional capture," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-12.
    6. McCubbins, Mathew D & Noll, Roger G & Weingast, Barry R, 1987. "Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 243-277, Fall.
    7. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2019. "Civil service and the growth of government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Jonathan Portes & Giuseppe Forte, 2017. "The economic impact of Brexit-induced reductions in migration," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(suppl_1), pages 31-44.
    9. Sean Gailmard & John W. Patty, 2007. "Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 873-889, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hartwell, Christopher A. & Devinney, Timothy, 2021. "Populism, political risk, and pandemics: The challenges of political leadership for business in a post-COVID world," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(4).
    2. Titl, Vitezslav & De Witte, Kristof, 2022. "How politics influence public good provision," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Luca Bellodi & Massimo Morelli & Matia Vannoni, 2021. "The Costs of Populism for the Bureaucracy and Government Performance: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21158, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sasso, Greg & Morelli, Massimo, 2021. "Bureaucrats under Populism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    2. Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan & Landa, Dimitri, 2015. "Political accountability and sequential policymaking," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 95-108.
    3. Guido Merzoni & Federico Trombetta, 2021. "A Note on Asymmetric Policies: Pandering and State-specific Costs of Mismatch in Political Agency," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis2102, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    4. Campos, Luciano & Casas, Agustín, 2021. "Rara Avis: Latin American populism in the 21st century," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Turner, Ian R, 2021. "Policy Durability, Agency Capacity, and Executive Unilateralism," SocArXiv stnzf, Center for Open Science.
    6. Peter Grajzl, 2011. "A property rights approach to legislative delegation," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 177-200, June.
    7. Ian R Turner, 2017. "Working smart and hard? Agency effort, judicial review, and policy precision," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(1), pages 69-96, January.
    8. Abbott, Kenneth W. & Genschel, Philipp & Snidal, Duncan & Zangl, Bernhard, 2018. "The governor's dilemma: Competence versus control in indirect governance," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2018-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    9. Harris, Adam S. & Sigman, Rachel & Meyer-Sahling, Jan-Hinrik & Mikkelsen, Kim Sass & Schuster, Christian, 2020. "Oiling the bureaucracy? political spending, bureaucrats and the resource curse," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    10. Ryan Bubb & Patrick L. Warren, 2014. "Optimal Agency Bias and Regulatory Review," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(1), pages 95-135.
    11. Kenneth W. Abbott & Philipp Genschel & Duncan Snidal & Bernhard Zangl, 2020. "Competence versus control: The governor's dilemma," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(4), pages 619-636, October.
    12. Margherita Negri, 2017. "Good Politicians' Distorted Incentives," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201713, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    13. John M. de Figueiredo & Edward H. Stiglitz, 2015. "Democratic Rulemaking," NBER Working Papers 21765, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Patacconi, Andrea & Vikander, Nick, 2015. "A model of public opinion management," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 73-83.
    15. Patty, John & Turner, Ian R, 2024. "Strange Bedfellows: How the Need for Good Governance Shapes Budgetary Control of Bureaucracy," OSF Preprints pnx2u, Center for Open Science.
    16. Daniel Gibbs, 2020. "Civil service reform, self‐selection, and bureaucratic performance," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 279-304, July.
    17. Merzoni, Guido & Trombetta, Federico, 2022. "Pandering and state-specific costs of mismatch in political agency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 132-143.
    18. Naseer, Shaheen & Heine, Klaus, 2017. "Bureaucratic Identity and the Shape of Public Policy: A Game Theoretic Analysis," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168144, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Michael M Ting & James M Snyder Jr & Shigeo Hirano & Olle Folke, 2013. "Elections and reform: The adoption of civil service systems in the U.S. states," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 363-387, July.
    20. Kwan Nok Chan & Shiwei Fan, 2021. "Friction and bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 1406-1418, October.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14499. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.