Original
The Politicization of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Brazil
Abstract
In developing countries, incumbents commonly exercise political influence over bureaucrats through monitoring or patronage hiring. We investigate a new politicization channel: a phenomenon where bureaucrats join political parties while in office. First, with a regression discontinuity design and administrative data on the universe of Brazilian municipal bureaucrats, we identify an incumbency advantage in their politicization. Second, we find larger effects for a special set of bureaucrats: the ones that interviewed households for enrollment into Bolsa Família (BF). Third, we show that these effects are even stronger for interviewers highly exposed to voters and in municipalities where BF was expanded. Our findings suggest a policy-driven logic for this politicization: voter-facing bureaucrats who deliver salient policies accumulate electoral capital, which is converted into rents by joining the incumbent political networks.
中文
官僚的政治化：来自巴西的证据
摘要
在发展中国家，在任者通常通过监督或庇护性雇佣对官僚施加政治影响。我们考察一条新的政治化渠道：官僚在任职期间加入政党的现象。首先，利用断点回归设计和覆盖巴西市级官僚全体的行政数据，我们识别出官僚政治化中的在任优势。其次，我们发现对一类特殊官僚的效应更大：即为“家庭补助金”（Bolsa Família, BF）项目入户访谈以登记受益家庭的官僚。第三，我们表明，对于高度接触选民的访谈员，以及在BF项目扩大的市镇，这些效应更强。我们的发现表明，这种政治化存在一种政策驱动的逻辑：面向选民、负责交付显著性政策的官僚积累了选举资本，并通过加入在任者的政治网络将其转化为租金。
关键词
政治化、官僚、在任优势、断点回归设计、巴西、家庭补助金、庇护主义、选举资本