Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14499
Authors: Massimo Morelli; Greg Sasso
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 alsoshow that bureaucratic turnover is higher under populists when the bureaucracy is strong and higher under non-populists when the bureaucracy is weak.
Keywords: N/A
JEL Codes: N/A
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Populist leaders (D72) | Bureaucratic loyalty (D73) |
| Bureaucratic loyalty (D73) | Policy implementation (D78) |
| Populist leaders (D72) | Policy implementation (D78) |
| Bureaucratic strength (D73) | Bureaucratic turnover under populists (J63) |
| Bureaucratic weakness (D73) | Bureaucratic turnover under nonpopulists (D73) |