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Does Pendleton's Premise Hold in New and Old Democracies Alike? Politicization and Performance in the U.S. and Central and Eastern Europe

Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences

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Title Does Pendleton's Premise Hold in New and Old Democracies Alike? Politicization and Performance in the U.S. and Central and Eastern Europe
 
Creator PROFIROIU, Marius Constantin; Professor, Department of Administration and Public
Management, Faculty of Administration and Public
Management, Academy of Economic Studies,
Bucharest, Romania
PETROVSKY, Nicolai; Assistant Professor, Martin School of Public Policy and
Administration, University of Kentucky, USA
JENNINGS, Jr., Edward T.; Professor, Martin School of Public Policy and Administration,
University of Kentucky, USA
 
Subject politicization; government performance; PART; absorption rate.
 
Description Merit-based career civil services are grounded in the idea that government will serve citizens best if its officials are hired based on their human capital and promoted based on their competence, instead of their ties to elected officials. Political appointees, on the other hand are appointed for many reasons other than managerial competence. Agency executives appointed from within a merit system are expected to outperform short-term political appointees, who lack their expertise, experience, and public management skills. Lewis (2007) provides evidence to support this idea for U.S. federal programs. Our ex ante theoretical expectation is that politicization is also negatively related to agency performance in other political systems. Yet there is no systematic empirical evidence whether this is holds for young democracies, where executive experience might mean experience in the ways of the old authoritarian regime. We therefore conduct the first comparative study of this topic, looking at the U.S., Romania, Poland, and Hungary.
 
Publisher Babes Bolyai University
 
Contributor An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 11th Biennial and 20th Anniversary Public Management Research Conference (Maxwell School, Syracuse University, June 2-4, 2011).
 
Date 2012-10-01
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/77
 
Source Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences; 2012: Issue No. 37 E/October; 143-154
1842-2845
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://rtsa.ro/tras/index.php/tras/article/view/77/73
 
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