Who gets political appointments? Party loyalty and bureaucratic expertise in
Brazil
Lorena Barberia (Universidade de São Paulo)
Sérgio Praça (Universidade Federal do ABC)
Introduction
Since Weber’s [1948]seminal article on bureaucracy and politics, much has been
written about the balance between party loyalists and bureaucratic competence in public
administration. While partisan appointees tend to make government responsive to
bureaucrats and sensitive to electoral pledges, they might lack the expertise to make the
administration work. A “government of strangers” (Heclo 1977), in theory, hinders the
president’s ability to fully implement her new policies.
To err on the side of bureaucratic competence is also possible. Tenured civil
servants are somewhat free to ignore party politics and boycott policies they are not
comfortable with. Even if they agree with the new president’s agenda, they might lack
the incent to navigate well between partisan interests and expert policy implementation.
Most of the literature differs between “patronage” and “civil service merit
systems” (Spiller and Urbiztondo 1994; Lapuente and Nistotskaya 2009) - or, to put it
another way, “neutral” and “responsive” competence (Moe 1989; Aberbach and
Rockman 1994). The former is structured considering primarily partisan and coalitional
interests, while the latter, through mechanisms such as bureaucratic careers, is
structured in order to keep policymaking away from the short time horizons of
politicians (Spiller and Tommasi 2003). Contrary to this dichotomy, we show how an
important mechanism associated with “patronage” systems - political appointment slots
- is used strategically by the president and his party to select managers according to
criteria not necessarily captured by civil service examination, such as political
relationships and types of expertise.
We use an original dataset of Brazilian federal government employees and their
party affiliations to examine whether high-level political appointments are driven
primarily by meritocracy or patronage. Our results, contrary to long-standing debate in
political science, show that neither hypothesis is fully correct. Administrative
experience is fundamental for appointment to the highest offices of the administration.
At the same time, we also find that partisanship matters significantly. High-level
appointees were more likely to be affiliated with President Dilma Rousseff’s Worker’s
Party as opposed to coalition or opposition parties, or nonpartisan.
This is especially interesting because there are an overwhelming number of
authors whose analysis supports arguments for less politicization of the bureaucracy.
Besides normative positions such as Weber’s, empirical analysis of the interaction
between bureaucracy and politics show that appointees are less competent managers
(Gilmour and Lewis 2006; Lewis 2007); that agencies with more political interference
are less capable to implement policies (Geddes 1990, 1994), and this is anticipated
strategically by the president (Geddes 1994; Parsneau 2013); that targets for agency
spending are identified using political criteria when appointees are given enough
discretion (Dahlstrom 2011; Gordon 2011) etc.
Brazil is an interesting test case for the relationship between bureaucracy and
politics. This is due to three factors. The first is that, unlike many countries, such as
Mexico, Poland and United Kingdom (Matheson et al 2007, p. 19), party activity by
bureaucrats is not prohibited. The second is that the Brazilian state has undergone
drastic changes over the last thirty years, arguably becoming more policy-oriented and
less clientilistic (Lyne 2005). Finally, our data refers to 2011, the year in which the
leftist government of the Worker’s Party transitioned from Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to
Dilma Rousseff. The latter’s emphasis on infrastructure projects instead of social
policymakes for an interesting contrast to President Lula’s policy priorities and patterns
of political appointments.
2
Within the comparative politics literature on bureaucracy, Brazil occupies a
central place, having been studied by a host of influential scholars (Schneider 1991,
Geddes 1994, Evans 1995) who argued that informal relationships between bureaucrats
and politicians shaped many important policies since the seventies. According to these
scholars, we should expect most political appointment offices to be filled by party
activists, because there is strong demand from political parties belonging to the coalition
for jobs in the bureaucracy. We should also expect most of lower-level political
appointment offices to be filled by partisans and high-level appointment offices to be
filled by bureaucrats, in an attempt to maximize expertise and competence.
The fact that both of these two last statements are true shows that Barbara
Geddes’ classic argument about “pockets of efficiency” is correct on both counts:
presidents want competence and need to dole out patronage positions. However, these
two goals may not be mutually exclusive: Brazilian presidents use political appointment
offices as informal mechanisms for selecting competent managers. Cameron et al (2013)
argue that “personnel policies can encourage intrinsically motivated public sector
employees to invest in expertise, seek promotion, remain in the public sector, and
develop policy projects”. As we show, bureaucrats in Brazil are selected to political
appointment positions - for which they get a pay rise and the opportunity to formulate
policy - according to certain characteristics related not only to politicization, but also to
different types of expertise.
Contrary to most of the literature on partisan political appointees, we argue that
political appointments held by party members are neither inherently good nor inherently
bad, but rather dependent on its effects with respect to the wider political context, such
as the nature of party organizations and the electoral system. When political competition
is high, politicians are more uncertain about reelection, and this gives them more
incentives to supplement campaign finance through illegal means (Samuels 2006). The
siphoning of funds from public agencies is a classic mechanism through which
politicians do this. Party members which occupy political appointment offices will thus
be pressured, by the party as organization, to take advantage of their positions for the
greater good of the party.
II.Literature
Two types of political appointees are usually highlightedby the literature. The
first type are “expert outsiders” – that is, people who are not in the public service and
are called into political appointment positions in order to implement the new president’s
policies.
Heclo’s well-known assessment of political appointee recruitment in the United
States (Heclo 1977, 1) - “the search for effective political leadership in a bureaucracy of
responsible career officials has become extraordinarily difficult in Washington. In every
new crop of political appointees, some will have had government experience and a few
will have worked together, but when it comes to group commitment to political
leadership in the executive branch they constitute a government of strangers” - explains
the phenomenon.
Although outsiders might have previous government experience, as well as
academic or professional expertise that will come in handy for their political
appointment slot, they tend not to keep their jobs for the whole mandate. One of the
reasons this happens because of recruitment by the private sector, offering better wages
(Cameron et al 2013). High appointee turnover is problematic because it might
negatively affect organizational expertise (Carpenter 2001, p. 29), thereby increasingthe
3
costs of bureaucratic monitoring, because new employees are more difficult to monitor
than bureaucrats that politicians have known for a longer while (Huber 1998) and,
finally, because it might make high-turnover agencies less attractive to qualified civil
servants (Lewis 2008, p. 58)
The second type of political appointees highlighted by the literature are “partisan
outsiders” – that is, people who occupy political appointment positions because they
belong to a certain political party. This is the main focus of comparative politics
scholars (Geddes 1994; Kopecky, Mair and Spirova 2012) and is commonly associated
with patronage - either substituting a civil service merit system or coexisting alongside a
civil service merit system.
Brazil’s multiparty presidentialism, along with an open-list proportional
electoral system, makes large and ideologically incoherent coalitions very much a part
of the normal political scenario with increases in the demand for patronage positions in
the bureaucracy.Since President Fernando Collor’s disastrous attempt at governing
through decrees with a minority coalition in 1991, presidents Fernando Henrique
Cardoso (PSDB), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Dilma Rousseff (PT) have
governed mostly with majority coalitions. These are held together through a delicate
combination of the appointment of partisan cabinet ministers (Amorim Neto 1994,
2002), federal spending of budget amendments proposed by parliamentary
backbenchers(Pereira and Mueller 2004) and the doling out of political appointment
slots(Schneider 1993, p. 345; Geddes 1994,Evans 1995, p. 61-65; Praça, Freitas and
Hoepers 2011), comprising a diverse “executive toolbox” (Raile et al 2011) ripe for
strategic action of political parties and the president.
III.Data and Methods
Brazil is, for reasons already noted, an interesting case in which to investigate
how political appointments are distributed to political parties and/or to career civil
servants. But it is also a good case because its federal government disclosesindividuallevel data for both political appointees and career civil servants and their respective
party affiliations.
Our dataset comprises about 327 thousand civil servants and political appointees
who work in federal government agencies in Brazil.1As of December 2010, 21,681 (4%)
of these employees were potential partisan appointees. They occupy the so-called
“DAS” (an acronym of Direção e Assessoramento Superior, or High Level Execution
and Advisory) offices, first implemented during the military dictatorship in 1970 and
whose appointments were maintained in the 1988 Constitution.2 DAS appointees are
responsible, along with the minister, for the most important decisions taken in each
ministry. One can divide the DAS appointees in two groups: DAS-1 to 3 and DAS-4 to
6. There are 17,114 (79%) DAS-1 to 3 appointees, and 4,567 (21%) DAS-4 to 6
appointees.
The first group is made up of low-level positions, with little policy formulation
competence. They are paid from R$ 2,115 to 4,042 (US$ 1,200 - 2,200). Higher-level
DAS appointees – that is, DAS-4 to 6 – are paid from R$ 6,843 to 11,179 (US$ 3,880 –
6,351) and control, influence and implement policies according to directives put forth
by the minister and/or political parties. If the appointee is a career bureaucrat, he can opt
1
The Brazilian federal bureaucracy is comprised of 537,095 active employees, as well as about the same
number of retirees. As we explain below, we excluded several agencies so the total sample for this study
is smaller.
2
See D’Araújo (2009, p. 17-18) for more details.
4
to receive the full salary given to the position he gained by merit plus up to 60% of the
DAS wage, a comfortable choice which some analysts consider excessively generous
(De Bonis and Pacheco 2010, p. 359-360). Since July 2005, DAS appointees are
formally nominated by the minister of the Planejamento (D’Araújo 2009, p. 20),
benefiting from informal consultation with the minister of the Casa Civil.3 The Casa
Civil is the most important bureau within the Brazilian presidency, also responsible for
gathering legislative propositions from the other ministries and turning some of them
into government bills and decrees (Queiroz 2009, p. 94-96).
Our dependent variable is a dichotomous variable that equals 1 in the case that
the individual in our dataset holds a high-level DAS (categories 5 and 6). Our reason for
focusing on these two highest levels is that these are the highest paying and most
prestigious posts. In addition, these categories are not regulated as are other DAS
appointments. The Executive can appoint any public or privately employed citizen to
these posts. In contrast,a 2005 decree mandates that 75% of all lower-level (DAS-1 to
3) and 50% of DAS-4 political appointment offices in the ministries should go to civil
servants.4Among all civil servants, the probability of holding a DAS appointment is
quiet low with higher level DAS appointments being most difficult to secure. Among all
civil servants, 6.7% hold DAS appointments and high-DAS civil servants are a
relatively small share of the total civil servant pool (1.4%). Of all civil servants who
hold DAS appointments, 21.0% hold the highest level appointments (high-level DAS
appointments) with the remainder holding low-level DAS appointments (79.0%).
Overall, partisanship among Brazilian federal civil servants is quite low. Only
12.5% of all civil servants are affiliated with a party. However, a relatively higher share
of high-level DAS civil servants is affiliated with a party (19.4%). High-level DAS
appointees have also been party members for much longer (an average 1070 days) than
average civil servants (642 days) and low-DAS civil servants (611 days).
Among all civil servants, an average of 2.1% are affiliated with the Worker`s
Party. Whereas only 3.0% of low-level DAS servants are affiliated with the Worker`s
Party, 9.4% of high-level DAS appointees were registered as active PT members. The
share of civil servants with an affiliation to a political party that is part of the PT
governing coalition is 5.4% for the entire pool as compared to 5.7% for high-level DAS
and 4.8% for low-level DAS appointees. The rates of party membership for those civil
servants affiliated with a party that is an opposition to the governing coalition is much
lower, 2.5% of all civil servants, 2.4% of high-level and 2.3% of low-level DAS
appointees.
In addition to partisanship, we recognize that appointments may be driven by the
desires of Presidents to recruit highly capable individuals. One important skill that is
needed in government is “administrative expertise”, which we understand as the skills
that are necessary to effectively work within the public sector and navigate the
bureaucracy. An example of this type of expertise is skills, such as the capacity to write
public auctions,to coordinate procurement processes, to organize civil service
examinations, and to act effectively as managers.Since 1988, the Brazilian federal
government has hired around 1,200 “gestores de políticas públicas” who are civil
servants specialized in public management, much like French bureaucrats who study in
the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. They can work in any area of the federal
3
We thank Fernando Abrucio for bringing this to our attention.
A similar idea was proposed in the mid-nineties by minister Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, but lacked
support from the coalition (Pacheco 2010, p. 194-195). The proposal probably only passed in July 2005
due to the unveiling of the “Mensalão” corruption scandal the month before. Santos (2009, p. 14) points
out that a few ministerial units enacted even stricter rules for the appointment of DAS offices.
4
5
government and frequently fight for high-level appointments in area ministries. We
consider those with this type of training to hold administrative expertise.
However, bureaucratic skills are not the only skills that are needed by incoming
presidential administrations. Presidential appointees are also awarded to individuals
having “agency expertise”, which we understand as meaning background in main
policies formulated and implemented by a certain agency.To explain the types of
individuals whom we code as having agency expertise, we will give three examples.
First, an anthropologist who works in the Fundação Nacional do Índio (Funai), the
agency responsible for protecting the rights of indigenous people. His policy-specific
expertise is given by academic training and on-the-job experience, both of which
prepare him to deal specifically with the policy goals and strategies of that agency.
Another example is a deputy in the Federal Police, the Brazilian equivalent of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Deputies (Delegados) are responsible for commanding
investigations of corruption involving businessmen and, potentially, politicians. Thus
they are responsible for “fulfilling” an important part of the agency’s mandate. Finally,
lawyers working in the Ministério da Justiça, the Brazilian Justice Department, use their
“policy-specific” expertise in order to make sure the ministry does what is required by
law to do: protect basic human rights for all citizens; organize and make sure all bills
proposed by the president will not have their constitutionality challenged (and, if this is
impossible, they help argue in favor the bill’s constitutionality). The point we would
like to stress is that this is much different from a lawyer working in the Ministério da
Agricultura, an agency whose jurisdiction is not directly related to legal affairs.
Therefore, we code agency expertise to try to capture these differences.
We define as a “federal agency” an organization that is necessarily responsible
for the implementation of a certain policy or set of policies, not only oversight, and that
has a national jurisdiction. There are 327 bureaucratic agencies in the Brazilian federal
government, 101of which we have analyzed in this article. We excluded agencies that
are responsible for oversight only, and not the implementation of a certain policy (10
agencies); agencies that do not have national jurisdiction, such as universities and
regional research centers, even though they are formally linked to ministries (110
agencies); agencies for which federal civil servants were transferred to, but which are
not a part of the federal executive, such as the Senate and state-owned enterprises (103
agencies); agencies that do not exist anymore, but were included in the government’s
original dataset (7 agencies).
As we are keenly interested in seeking to examine whether partisanship matters
and if it matters most for specific areas of the federal government, we code the 101
agencies into seven policy areas: i) Economic Development, Science and Technology;
ii) Economic Policy; iii) Infrastructure Policy; iv) Legal Policy; v) Social Policy; vi)
Presidential Office; vii) Other. Based on 48 interviews conducted with top bureaucrats
in 2012 and 20135, table 1 presents the degree to which we expect political
appointmentsto matter for specific types of policy areas.
Table 1. Policy areas and political appointment patterns
Economic
Development, Science
and Technology
Little partisan interest
5
Economic Policy
Infrastructure
Legal Policy
Presidency
Social Policy
Other
Lots of partisan
interest, but
politicians
delegate to
* Lots of
partisan interest
* 2011: high on
the agenda
Little partisan
interest
Coalition
partners
delegate to
president’s
* Lots of partisan
interest
* 2011: high on the
agenda
Some
partisan
interest
The interviews were conducted by Felix Garcia Lopez and Sérgio Praça.
6
bureaucrats
party
In order to examine what factors increase the probability of securing a high-level DAS
appointment, we estimate the following model:
HiDAS = β 0 + β1Duration + β 2 AgencyExpertise + β 3 Administrative Expertise +
β 4 Prior Federal Employment + β5 Prior Non-Federal Employment + β6 CivilServiceExam +
β7 PT + β8CoalitionParty + β9 EconDevpt + β10Social + β11Infrastructure + β12 Legal + β13EconPolicy
+ β14 Presidency+µ
As the dependent variable is a binary variable which equals one if the individual
holds a high-civil service appointment (DAS 5 and 6), we estimate the model using a
logistic regression. In the model, we control for the number of days in which the
individual has been in the civil service (Duration), whether she has agency experience
(Agency), whether she has administrative expertise (Administrative), as well as a
dummy variable if she held past federal government posts (Federal) or non-federal, and
a dummy variable if employed in the non-federal civil service (Non-Federal). If the
civil service employee passed an entrance exam (Concursado), we code a dumy variable
as being equal to one.
We include two dummy variables for party affiliation. The first, PT, is coded as
one if the individual is affiliated with the Worker’s Party (PT). The second dummy is
coded as one if the individual is affiliated with a party that was a member of the
coalition (Coalition). To avoid over-identification, we omit category if the individual is
affiliated with the PSDB was omitted from the model. In the model, we also include six
dummy variables to distinguish in which area of the federal government the employee is
based. Agencies, which were not coded as being belonging either to the economic,
infrastructure, social policy, legal or Presidency, were coded as other and are the
omitted dummy variable in the model.
IV. Results
As the descriptive data presented earlier indicate, a surprising relatively low
share of federal civil service employees are affiliated to political parties. Yet, the
likelihood of party affiliation increases given a higher political appointment (DAS). By
controlling for agency and administrative experience, our regression model allows us to
test if party affiliation matters and how much it matters once the other attributes of civil
servants are taken into consideration.
The regression results are presented in Appendix 1. In the results below, we
report the regression results from the sub-sample of only DAS employees. In the
paragraphs that follow, we focus on the implications of our findings by examining the
predicted probabilities of obtaining a high DAS. We have four sets of important
findings.
First, our results show that different types of competence and expertise are
important factors driving the choice of political appointees. High-Level political
appointments in Brazil are more easily obtained by civil servants who have
administrative expertise and this is particularly true for infrastructure agencies.Among
all DAS appointees with no party affiliation, the probability of holding a high-level
DAS is 15% (Table 2). Those with administrative expertise and no agency expertise
7
have a 32% chance of receiving a high-level DAS. On the other hand, agency expertise
seems to be less relevant. If an individual holds agency expertise for the agency in
which he is employed, this will only increase the probability of being appointed to a
high-level post by 3%.
Public sector employees who gained their post by passing a civil service exam
are more likely to hold a DAS as compared to their counterparts (see Table 3). If an
individual is Concursado, but lacks administrative expertise, the chance of a DAS
appointment are 74%. With all other characteristics at the mean, those who passed a
civil service exam and also have administrative experience have an 80% likelihood of
receiving a DAS in the Dilma Administration.
Table 2. Predicted Probability of High-Level DAS for those DAS depending on Party Affiliation,
Agency and Administrative Expertise*
Party Affiliation
Probability without Probability with
Probability
Probability
Status
Agency and
Administrative
without
with
Expertise and no
Administrative
Administrative
Administrative
Expertise and
Expertise and
Expertise
Agency Expertise
with Agency
Agency
Expertise
Expertise
Non-affiliated
0.1517
0.3213
0.1885
0.3806
DAS
Opposition party
0.1715
0.2118
0.4156
member
0.3538
Non-PT coalition
0.1977
0.2424
0.4584
member
0.3946
PT member
0.3632
0.6015
0.4255
0.6622
*All other variables are at mean.
Second, our results clearly suggest that partisanship is an important factor in
explaining how high-level political appointments are distributed in the Brazilian federal
government. Moreover, among all party affiliations, those who are affiliated with the
Worker`s Party are most likely to receive a high-level post. Given that this is the party
of the President, these findings show that the Executive does give priority to its party
members over other appointees who are members of parties in the coalition. If an
individual is a PT party member and has no administrative or agency expertise, the
probability of holding a high-level DAS is 36%. On the other hand, if the same
individual is a member of a coalition party, the chances are 20%. These chances are
quite low if one takes into account that the chances of a civil servant affiliated to an
opposition party having a high appointment are 17%.
Table 3. Predicted Probability of High-Level DAS for those DAS depending on Administrative and
Agency Expertise and Civil Service Exam Status*
Passed Civil Service Exam
Non-Civil Service Exam Entrant
without Agency Expertise
0.0034
0.2139
with Agency Expertise
0.0049
0.2811
without Administrative Expertise 0.0346
0.7395
with Administrative Expertise
0.0489
0.8031
*All other variables are at mean.
Third, the degree to which partisanship matters depends on the sector of the
federal government.Our initial hypothesis was that partisanship should matter most for
those agencies which are responsible for implementing the president’s core policies.
Our findings indicate that this is only partially true.
8
Table 4 presents the predicted probabilities of holding a high-level DAS post for
those individuals who have administrative experience depending on the agency sector
type and party affiliation status. We initially expected PT party affiliation to matter
greatly for appointments in agencies engaged in economic and social policy-making, as
well as those belonging to the Presidency. Contrary to our expectations, however,
social policy agencies are not, compared to other federal government agencies, more
likely to hire political appointees based on partisan criteria. The types of sectors that are
most likely to appoint high-level DASs who are PT members are in the areas of
infrastructure, legal policy and in the Executive Branch. There are relatively fewer highlevel DASs who are PT-affiliated in the areas on economic and social policy.
Table 4. Predicted Probability of High-Level DAS for those DAS with Administrative Expertise depending on
Party Affiliation and Agency Type*
Infrastructure
Economic
Economic
Legal
Presidency
Social Policy Other
Party
Policy
Affiliation Development, Policy
Science and
Status
Technology
Nonaffiliated
DAS
Opposition
party
member
Non-PT
coalition
member
PT
member
0.3391
0.2569
0.4310
0.4105
0.4065
0.2660
0.3668
0.3725
0.2857
0.4670
0.4462
0.4421
0.2954
0.4012
0.4140
0.3226
0.5106
0.4896
0.4855
0.3330
0.4438
0.6207
0.5244
0.7072
0.6895
0.6860
0.5361
0.6488
*All other variables are at mean.
Partisanship seems to matter a great deal for those civil servants working in
agencies that do infrastructure-related projects, a sector of government which has
received a significant inflow of resources in the Dilma Administration. For those with
administrative experience and no party affiliation, the chance of holding a DAS as
compared to any DAS appointment is 43%. This is already a quite high probability and
makes sense as one needs to have significant training to successfully implement public
auctions, etc. in the sector of infrastructure and thus administrative skills should be
highly rewarded. Yet, partisanship also matters. Whereas the chances of a high-level
appointment slightly increase if one is a member of the coalition to 51%, the likelihood
of a high-level DAS is 71% for a PT partisan with administrative experience.
9
Figure 1. High-Level DAS Appointment by Agency and Party Affiliation Type(for those with
Agency Expertise only)
Fourth, agency expertise does matter for some areas of government. High-level
appointments in economic policy and economic development agencies are more easily
obtained by civil servants who have agency expertise.6Similar to administrative
expertise, the areas most likely to reward high-level appointments to the Worker`s Party
are for those individuals working in agencies that are focused on infrastructure, legal
and serving the Presidency. Yet, past experience in an agency is not as significant as
administrative experience. Those who have prior background working in an agency
belonging to the Executive Branch only have a 50% likelihood of holding a high-level
DAS if affiliated to the PT. Given that the PT is now in its third consecutive term, this
finding is surprising as one would have expected that a higher share of these prestigious
posts would have been awarded to PT members of the Lula Administration. Instead, our
results suggest that this was not as strong a determinant for distributing a DAS.
V. Conclusions
Our analysis raises a number of questions for scholars of Brazil and of federal
bureaucracies and their evolution. Some tentative conclusions are in order. First, our
analysis shows that political appointments cannot be equated exclusively with
“patronage”, even in a political system in which actors have all the incentives to use the
bureaucracy for partisan purposes. Second, political appointments are strategically used
by the agencies to build up certain types of expertise - which we defined as
“administrative” or “agency-specific” - that might be useful for them either to carry out
the presidential agenda or for the long run. Third, we show that economic policy
agencies are not more meritocratic than other bureaucracies, contrary to most of the
literature on bureaucratic control in developing countries (Geddes 1994, Evans 1995).
Thus far, our results, tell us more about the pattern of the highest level of
presidential appointments relative to the small share of presidential appointees that
comprise the totality of federal employees in Brazil. Clearly, however, our results are
very preliminary and merit further research. In a subsequent stage, we plan to further
tests these results by testing whether these same patterns hold when we examine the
likelihood of obtaining a high-level political appointment relative to any federal
government job.
6
This is very much in line with what a former “secretário-executivo” of the Ministério da Fazenda told us
about choosing appointees: “I even hired members of the opposition party to stay in their appointment
positions, because we desperately needed their input!” (interview conducted on April 2, 2013).
10
References
Aberbach, Joel D. & Rockman, Bert A. “Civil servants and policymakers: neutral or
responsive competence?”, Governance, v. 7, n. 4, 1994, p. 461-469.
Cameron, Charles M.; de Figueiredo, John M. & Lewis, David. “Public sector personnel
economics: wages, promotion standards, and the control-competence trade-off in
government agencies”. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political
Science Association, Chicago, 2013.
Carpenter, Daniel P. The forging of bureaucratic autonomy: reputations, networks, and
policy innovations in executive agencies, 1862-1928. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001.
Chang, Eric. “Electoral incentives for political corruption under open-list proportional
representation”, Journal of Politics, v. 67, n. 3, 2005, p. 716-730.
Dahlström, Carl. “Who takes the hit? Ministerial advisers and the distribution of welfare
state cuts”, Journal of European Public Policy, v. 18, n. 2, 2011, p. 294-310
D’Araujo, Maria Celina. (2009), A elite dirigente do governo Lula. Rio de Janeiro:
CPDOC/FGV.
De Bonis, Daniel & Pacheco, Regina Silvia. (2010), Nem político nem burocrata: o debate
sobre o dirigente público, in: Loureiro, Maria Rita; Abrucio, Fernando & Pacheco, Regina.
(eds.) Burocracia e política no Brasil: desafios para o Estado democrático no século XXI. Rio de
Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 329-362.
Evans, Peter. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995.
Geddes, Barbara. “Building ‘state’ autonomy in Brazil, 1930-1964”, Comparative
Politics, v. 22, n. 2, 1990, p. 217-235.
Geddes, Barbara. Politician’s dilemma: building state capacity in Latin America.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Gilmour, John B. & Lewis, David E. “Political appointees and the competence of
federal program management”, American Politics Research, v. 34, n. 1, 2006, p. 22-50.
Gordon, Sanford C. “Politicizing agency spending authority: lessons from a Bush-era
scandal”, American Political Science Review, v. 105, n. 4, 2011, p. 717-734.
Heclo, Hugh. A government of strangers: executive politics in Washington. Washington
D.C., Brookings Institution, 1977.
11
Huber, John. “How does cabinet instability affect political performance? Portfolio
volatility and health care cost containment in parliamentary democracies”. American
Political Science Review, vol. 92, no 3, 1998, pp. 577-91.
Kopecký, Petr; Mair, Peter and Spirova, Maria. Party Patronage and Party Government
in European Democracies. New York, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lapuente, Victor & Nistotskaya, Marina. “To the short-sighted victor belong the spoils:
politics and merit adoption in comparative perspective”, Governance, v. 22, n. 3, 2009,
p. 431-458.
Lewis, David. “Testing Pendleton’s premise: do political appointees make worse
bureaucrats?”, Journal of Politics, v. 69, n. 4, 2007, p. 1073-1088.
Lewis, David. The politics of presidential appointments: political control and
bureaucratic performance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 58.
Lyne, Mona. “Parties as programmatic agents: a test of institutional theory in Brazil”,
Party Politics, v. 11, n. 2, 2005, p. 193-216.
Matheson, A., Weber, B., Manning, N. and Arnould, E. ‘Study on the political
involvement in senior staffing and on the delineation of responsibilities between
ministers and senior civil servants’, OECD Working Paper on Public Governance, 2007,
OECD: Paris.
Moe, Terry. “The politics of bureaucratic structure”, in Chubb, John E. & Peterson, Paul
E. (eds.) Can the government govern? Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, 1989,
p. 267-329.
Pacheco, Regina Silvia. (2010), A agenda da nova gestão pública, in: Loureiro, Maria Rita;
Abrucio, Fernando & Pacheco, Regina. (eds.) Burocracia e política no Brasil: desafios para o
Estado democrático no século XXI. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 183-218.
Parsneau, Kevin. “Politicizing priority departments: presidential priorities and
subcabinet experience and loyalty”, American Politics Research, v. 41, n. 3, 2013, p.
443-470.
Pereira, Carlos and Mueller, Bernardo. “The cost of governing: strategic behavior of the
president and legislators in Brazil’s budgetary process”, Comparative Political Studies,
v. 37, n. 7, 2004, p. 781-815.
Praça, Sérgio; Freitas, Andréa & Hoepers, Bruno. “Political appointments and coalition
management in Brazil, 2007-2010”, Journal of Politics in Latin America, v. 3, n. 2,
2011, p. 141-172.
Queiroz, Antonio Augusto de. (2009), Por dentro do governo: como funciona a máquina pública.
Brasília: DIAP.
12
Raile, Eric; Pereira, Carlos & Power, Timothy. “The Executive toolbox: building
legislative support in a multiparty presidential regime”, Political Research Quarterly, v.
64, n. 2, 2011, p. 323-334.
Samuels, David. “Informal institutions when formal contracting is prohibited: campaign
finance in Brazil”, in Helmke, Gretchen & Levitsky, Steven (eds.) Informal Institutions
and Democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006, p. 87-105.
Schneider, Ben Ross. Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy
in Authoritarian Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.
___. “The career connection: a comparative analysis of bureaucratic preferences and
insulation”, Comparative Politics, v. 25, n. 3, 1993, p. 331-350.
Spiller, Pablo & Urbiztondo, Santiago. “Political appointees vs. career civil servants: a
multiple principals theory of political bureaucracies”, European Journal of Political
Economy, v. 10, 1994, p. 465-497.
Spiller, Pablo & Tommasi, Mariano. “The institutional foundations of public policy: a
transactions approach with application to Argentina”, Journal of Law, Economics &
Organization, v. 19, n. 2, 2003, p. 281-306.
Weber, Max. “Bureaucracy”, in Gerth, Hans & Mills, Carl W. From Max Weber:
Essays in Sociology. New York, Routledge, 1948.
13
Appendix 1. Probability of High DAS Appointment
Logit Regression Results
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
-0.756***
(0.0451)
0.748***
(0.0586)
0.181***
(0.0581)
0.929***
(0.0679)
-5.39e-05***
(6.65e-06)
-0.953***
(0.0572)
0.0679
(0.0927)
1.329***
(0.0568)
0.182***
(0.0583)
0.955***
(0.0683)
-5.08e-05***
(6.67e-06)
-0.916***
(0.0577)
0.0418
(0.0936)
1.336***
(0.0572)
1.079***
(0.0727)
0.187***
(0.0583)
0.959***
(0.0683)
-5.15e-05***
(6.68e-06)
-0.911***
(0.0577)
0.0449
(0.0936)
1.337***
(0.0572)
1.100***
(0.0729)
0.290***
(0.0775)
0.137
(0.115)
0.189***
(0.0583)
0.962***
(0.0683)
-5.26e-05***
(6.69e-06)
-0.911***
(0.0577)
0.0427
(0.0937)
1.335***
(0.0572)
0.857***
(0.103)
0.0485
(0.106)
-0.0792
(0.132)
0.261***
(0.0595)
0.973***
(0.0707)
-4.68e-05***
(6.79e-06)
-0.886***
(0.0591)
0.00772
(0.0949)
1.317***
(0.0591)
1.160***
(0.0736)
0.320***
(0.0782)
0.146
(0.117)
0.348***
(0.0671)
-0.0472
(0.0625)
0.737***
(0.0694)
0.469***
(0.0525)
0.637***
(0.0702)
0.653***
(0.0647)
-1.474***
(0.0440)
21,687
-9861
-11139
15
0.115
Variables
Agency Experience (Dummy)
Administrative Experience (Dummy)
# of Days of Civil Service Employment
Career Civil Servant (Concursado) (Dummy)
Civil Service Experience outside Federal Government (Dummy)
Civil Service Experience inside Federal Government (Dummy)
PT party member (Dummy)
Coalition party member (Dummy)
Opposition party member (Dummy)
Government Agency Type
Economic Development
Economic Policy
Infrastructure
Other
Presidency
Legal
# of days of Party membership
Constant
-1.223***
(0.0197)
-1.012***
(0.0301)
-1.106***
(0.0311)
-1.129***
(0.0318)
4.55e-05***
(1.34e-05)
-1.131***
(0.0317)
Observations
ll
ll_0
df_m
r2_p
Standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
21,695
-10867
-11141
2
0.0246
21,687
-10107
-11139
6
0.0927
21,687
-10002
-11139
7
0.102
21,687
-9995
-11139
9
0.103
21,687
-9989
-11139
10
0.103
14