Emerging Trends in the Study of Bureaucracy in the Developing World

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel investigates the intersections between bureaucratic effectiveness and other key political and social processes, from political participation to public finance and institutional reform. In doing so, it aims to shed new light onto a core puzzle for research and practice: how to build more effective, representative, and accountable bureaucracies in low- and middle-income countries.

The four papers approach this issue from different perspectives and using a range of methods. The first paper by Russel, Larreguy, and Hassan studies the intersection between bureaucrats’ personal characteristics and career trajectories, on the one hand, and the allocation of spending across sectors, on the other. The second paper by Purohit studies how gender quotas for politicians in India can limit the de facto responsiveness of the bureaucracy to female politicians in India. In the third paper, Bersch, Peh, and Vilaça examine how different political and bureaucratic rulemaking procedures affect citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy of the resulting rules, focusing on the case of Brazil and contributing to the literature on public participation in policymaking. In the fourth paper, based on a forthcoming book, Williams studies patterns of systemic civil service reform across six countries in Africa over the last thirty years, showing how the design, implementation, and outcomes of reforms are driven not just by political dynamics and donor influence but also by the complexity of the puzzles facing bureaucratic reformers. Methodologically, these four papers bring a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to bear, representing the increasingly broad range of approaches available to scholars of bureaucracy and development.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Public Finance in Kenya - Stuart Russell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Horacio Larreguy, ITAM; Mai Omer Hassan, MIT

• A Theory of Gendered Political Authority under Quotas - Bhumi Purohit, Georgetown University

• Does Participation Make Up for the Democratic Deficit? Evidence from Brazil - Katherine Bersch, Davidson College; Zi En Kimberly Peh, University of Notre Dame; Luiz Vilaça, University of Notre Dame

• Reform as Process: Implementing Civil Service Reform in Africa - Martin J. Williams, University of Michigan

• Does Competition Increase Pro-poor Responsiveness in Partisan Brokers? - Tesalia Rizzo, University of California, Merced; Mark Allan Schneider, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• David E. Lewis Vanderbilt University

Discussants

• Anjali Thomas Georgia Institute of Technology

• Guillermo Toral IE University