Who is in charge here? Legislators, bureaucrats and the policy making process

Abstract

Scholars in comparative politics often assume that political parties are the primary instruments for translating citizens’ preferences into specific policy outcomes. However, the crucial but often forgotten link between preferences, parties, and outcomes is the bureaucracy. Are bureaucrats able to affect policy outside of parties’ control? And, if so, how does this bureaucratic policy drift differ across institutional contexts? I argue that institutions that regulate the nomination process by which parties in government select bureaucrats (meritocratic versus partisan recruitment) determine the levels of bureaucratic influence on the policy making process, specifically in terms of policy change. I test my theoretical argument using two large cross-national datasets on budget allocations and policy stability. I find that bureaucratic professionalism partially explains changes in allocation to the “ideological” budgetary categories and is positively correlated with policy stability around the world.