Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-28T11:20:24.881Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Divided government, delegation, and civil service reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2020

Elliott Ash ,
Massimo Morelli  and
Matia Vannoni Open the ORCID record for Matia Vannoni [Opens in a new window]
Elliott Ash
Affiliation:
ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Massimo Morelli
Affiliation:
DONDENA, IGIER and CEPR, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy
Matia Vannoni*
Affiliation:
King's College London, London, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: matia.vannoni@kcl.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on the drivers of civil service reform in US states. We first demonstrate theoretically that divided government is a key trigger of civil service reform, providing nuanced predictions for specific configurations of divided government. We then show empirical evidence for these predictions using data from the second half of the 20th century: states tended to introduce these reforms under divided government, and in particular when legislative chambers (rather than legislature and governor) were divided.

Keywords

American politics

Information

Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 82 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Angrist, JD and Pischke, J-S (2008) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bendor, J, Taylor, S and Van Gaalen, R (1987) Politicians, bureaucrats, and asymmetric information. American Journal of Political Science 31(4), 796–828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernecker, A (2016) Divided we reform? Evidence from US welfare policies. Journal of Public Economics 142, 24–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, W, Ringquist, E, Fording, R and Hanson, R (1998) Measuring citizen and government ideology in the American States, 1960–93. American Journal of Political Science 42, 327–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertrand, M, Duflo, E and Mullainathan, S (2004) How much should we trust differences-in-differences estimates?. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119, 249–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boushey, GT and McGrath, RJ (2019) Does partisan conflict lead to increased bureaucratic policymaking? Evidence from the American States. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 119(1).Google Scholar
Brewer, GA and Selden, SC (2000) Why elephants gallop: assessing and predicting organizational performance in federal agencies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 10, 685–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, DP (2001) The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928, vol. 78. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Caughey, D and Sekhon, JS (2011) Elections and the regression discontinuity design: lessons from close US house races, 1942–2008. Political Analysis 19, 385–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, D, Xu, Y and Warshaw, C (2017) Incremental democracy: the policy effects of partisan control of state government. The Journal of Politics 79, 1342–1358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Congress US (1976) History of Civil Service Merit Systems of the United States and Selected Foreign Countries. Subcommittee on Manpower and Civil Service. Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, US House of Representatives. 94th Congress, 2d session. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Correia, S (2016) Linear models with high-dimensional fixed effects: an efficient and feasible estimator. Working paper. Available at https://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s457874.html.Google Scholar
Dresang, D (1982) Diffusion of civil service reform: the federal and state governments. Review of Public Personnel Administration 2, 35–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enikolopov, R (2014) Politicians, bureaucrats and targeted redistribution. Journal of Public Economics 120, 74–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, D and O'Halloran, S (1994) Administrative procedures, information, and agency discretion. American Journal of Political Science 38, 697–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, D and O'Halloran, S (1999) Delegating Powers: A Transaction Cost Politics Approach to Policy Making under Separate Powers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folke, O, Hirano, S and Snyder, J (2011) Patronage and elections in US states. American Political Science Review 105, 567–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franchino, F (2004) Delegating powers in the European community. British Journal of Political Science 34, 269–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, S and Patty, JW (2007) Slackers and zealots: civil service, policy discretion, and bureaucratic expertise. American Journal of Political Science 51, 873–889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, S and Patty, JW (2012 a) Formal models of bureaucracy. Annual Review of Political Science 15, 353–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, S and Patty, JW (2012 b) Learning While Governing: Expertise and Accountability in the Executive Branch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Geddes, B (1994) Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, TW and Krehbiel, K (1989) Asymmetric information and legislative rules with a heterogeneous committee. American Journal of Political Science 33(2), 459–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoogenboom, A (1959) The Pendleton act and the civil service. The American Historical Review 64, 301–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Housel, S (2014) Oklahoma's adoption of the merit system. Journal of Howard Edmondson and Cooperative Federalism Oklahoma Politics 23, 66–83.Google Scholar
Huber, J and Ting, M (2016) Civil Service and Patronage in Bureaucracies. New York, NY: Columbia University, pp. 1–55. Available at https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Civil-Service-and-Patronage-in-Bureaucracies-Huber-Ting/05e8838c5e6fd20fb3ffbc1a090d523e23bab498.Google Scholar
Johnson, R and Libecap, G (1994) The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, M (1979) Patrons and clients, jobs and machines: a case study of the uses of patronage. American Political Science Review 73, 385–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kernell, S and McDonald, M (1999) Congress and America's political development: the transformation of the post office from patronage to service. American Journal of Political Science 43, 792–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkland, PA, Phillips, JH, et al. (2018) Is divided government a cause of legislative delay?. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 13, 173–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klarner, C (2003) Measurement of the partisan balance of state government. State Politics and Policy Quarterly 3, 309–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, DE (2007) Testing Pendleton's premise: do political appointees make worse bureaucrats?. The Journal of Politics 69, 1073–1088.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, DE (2010) The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCubbins, MD, Noll, RG and Weingast, BR (1987) Administrative procedures as instruments of political control. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 3, 243–277.Google Scholar
McGrath, R (2013) The rise and fall of radical civil service reform in the US States. Public Administration Review 73, 638–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moe, T (1989) The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure. Can the Government Govern 267, 285–323.Google Scholar
Naff, K, Riccucci, N and Fox-Freyss, S (2001) Personnel Management in Government. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, EV and Kellough, JE (2012) Does civil service reform affect behavior? Linking alternative personnel systems, perceptions of procedural justice, and complaints. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 22, 121–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruhil, A and Camões, P (2003) What lies beneath: the political roots of state merit systems. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 13, 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schuster, C (2016) When the Victor cannot claim the spoils: Institutional incentives for professionalizing patronage states. IDB Working Paper Series (IDB-WP-667). Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2956685.Google Scholar
Schuster, C (2018) Patrons against clients, electoral uncertainty and bureaucratic tenure in politicized states. Regulation & Governance. Available at https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafritz, J (2012) Classics of Public Administration. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Silberman, BS (1993) Cages of Reason: The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T and Finegold, K (1982) State capacity and economic intervention in the early new deal. Political Science Quarterly 97, 255–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skowronek, S (1982) Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorauf, FJ (1959) Patronage and party. Midwest Journal of Political Science 3, 115–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, G (1956) Public Personnel Administration. New York, NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Theriault, S (2003) Patronage, the Pendleton act, and the power of the people. Journal of Politics 65, 50–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ting, M, Snyder, J, Hirano, S and Folke, O (2013) Elections and reform: the adoption of civil service systems in the US states. Journal of Theoretical Politics 25, 363–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ujhelyi, G (2014) Civil service rules and policy choices: evidence from US state governments. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6, 338–380.Google Scholar
Vannoni, M, Ash, E and Morelli, M (2020) Measuring discretion and delegation in legislative texts: methods and application to US states. Political Analysis FirstView, 1–15.Google Scholar
Volden, C (2002 a) Delegating power to bureaucracies: evidence from the States. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 18, 187–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volden, C (2002 b) A formal model of the politics of delegation in a separation of powers system. American Journal of Political Science 46, 111–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, RE and Brace, P (1999) American State and Local Politics: Directions for the 21st Century. New York, NY: Chatham House Publications.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Ash et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/C13Z0X
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Ash et al. supplementary material

Ash et al. supplementary material

Download Ash et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 123 KB