executives instead favor patronage -political discretion- in public employment. This paper proposes and tests an original theory … to explain when executives forsake patronage for merit. The theory exploits exogenous variation in the institutional … design of patronage states. In some, constitutions and budget laws monopolize patronage powers in the executive; in others …

The challenge of public administration reform is well-known: politicians often have little interest in the efficient … implementation of government policy. Using new data from 439 World Bank public sector reform loans in 109 countries, we demonstrate … their patronage powers. We support this conclusion with new evidence from many countries, allowing us to rule out …

reform programs in Ghana, 1987 to 2001. The study focuses on two very similar reform programmes, that is, the Civil Service … Reform Program (CSRP), 1987- 1993 and the Civil Service Performance Improvement Program (CSPIP), 1995- 2001. It seeks to … explicate the major determining factor in accounting for the variations in the implementation effectiveness of the reform …

Senior officials in the ministerial bureaucracy are responsible for the coordination of public service activity and …-profile occupational group from a political economics perspective. We analyze how political partisanship, political patronage after changes … selection of public servants has on senior official employment. We find some evidence for political patronage. …

facto empowerment, the threat of revolution is intact. In particular, the paper studies the relationship between a … democratic reform that extends the political rights of a threatening group and redistribution during periods of revolutionary … threat. Far from causing an increase in broad redistribution (e.g. social spending), I show that democratic reform - the …