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Bureaucrats under Populism

Greg Sasso and Massimo Morelli

Journal of Public Economics, 2021, vol. 202, issue C

Abstract: We explore the consequences of populism for bureaucrats’ incentives by analyzing a model of delegated policymaking between politicians and bureaucrats. Populist politicians prefer a bureaucrat who implements their policy commitment, while non-populist politicians prefer a good bureaucrat with discretion. The presence of populist politicians thus determines replacement of good with bad bureaucrats and creates incentives for good bureaucrats to “feign loyalty”. We show that feigning loyalty is more prevalent when the probability of populist leadership in the future is higher and the bureaucrats’ pool of potential replacements is worse. We also show that bureaucratic turnover is higher under populists when the bureaucracy is strong and higher under non-populists when the bureaucracy is weak.

Keywords: Keywords; Populism; Bureaucracy; Principal-Agent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D73 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:202:y:2021:i:c:s004727272100133x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104497

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