partisan Technocratic Cycles in Latin America

Stephan Kaplan ()
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Stephan Kaplan: George Washington University

Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy

Abstract: Given their powerful position in presidential cabinets, technocrats are an important transmission mechanism for explaining economic policy choices, but have received less attention compared to other wellestablished channels such as elections or democratic tenure. I incorporate the role of technocratic advisors into a domestic policymaking framework. Specifcally, I contend that left governments tend to appoint technocrats, or ministers with mainstream economics training, to signal their commitment to sound governance to the electorate. This partisan technocratic pattern, however, is conditioned by a country’s place in its business cycle. During periods of high growth, left governments are more likely to align with their partisan preferences and appoint heterodox advisors that drift from scal discipline. Employing an originally constructed data index, the Index of Economic Advisors, I conduct a statistical test of 16 Latin American countries from 1960 to 2011, finding partisan shifts in technocratic appointments and fiscal governance that are conditioned by national business cycles.

Keywords: economic policy; technocrats; partisanship; heterodox; fiscal policy; inflation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-mac and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2016-28

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