AMERICAN POLITICS / LEITNER POLITICAL ECONOMY WORKSHOP: Michael Ting (Columbia University), “Civil Service and Patronage in Bureaucracies”

We develop a model of government personnel policy with electoral competition in an effort to understand when high quality bureaucracies will be created and sustained. In the model, two parties compete for office over an infinite horizon, and politicians in office choose a mix between civil servants (who produce public goods in a good bureaucracy) and patronage appointees (who produce private goods and can influence re-election). Civil servants make future good bureaucracies more likely, and thus personnel policies depend on incumbents’ electoral prospects and the anticipated actions of future politicians. Civil service hiring is maximized when both parties value public goods. It is also increasing in electoral strength if the opposing party does not value public goods highly, thus calling into question previous arguments that have linked electoral vulnerability to civil service reforms. Finally, numerical results on long-run behavior suggest that electorally dominant parties can increase long-term bureaucratic quality, electorally weak parties are associated with higher bureaucratic quality, and that polarization reduces bureaucratic quality and amplifies partisan advantages.

Michael M. Ting specializes in American politics and formal models of political institutions, with a focus on bureaucracy, elections, and legislatures. Some of his recent work on distributive politics, primary elections, federalism and whistleblowing has appeared in the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. He is also an author of A Behavioral Theory of Elections (Princeton Press, 2011) with Jonathan Bendor, Daniel Diermeier and David Siegel. His current projects include the development of government personnel systems and organizational turf wars.

This seminar is being hosted by the Leitner Political Economy Seminar at the MacMillan Center and sponsored jointly by the ISPS-CSAP American Politics & Public Policy Workshop.