Strengthening State Capacity: Civil Service Reform and Public Sector Performance during the Gilded Age

Abhay Aneja and Guo Xu

American Economic Review, 2024, vol. 114, issue 8, 2352-87

Abstract: We use newly digitized records from the post office to study the effects of strengthened state capacity between 1875 and 1901. Exploiting the implementation of the Pendleton Act—a landmark statute that shielded bureaucrats from political interference—across US cities over two waves, we find that civil service reform reduced postal delivery errors and increased productivity. These improvements were most pronounced during election years when the reform dampened bureaucratic turnover. We provide suggestive evidence that reformed cities witnessed declining local partisan newspapers. Separating politics from administration, therefore, not only improved state effectiveness but also weakened the role of local politics.

JEL-codes: D24 D73 H83 J45 L82 L87 N41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230019 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E198825V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230019.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230019.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:8:p:2352-87

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20230019

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().