Performance Measurement as a Political Discipline Mechanism

Abstract

Governments at one level increasingly develop measures of the activities of policymakers at another. That policymaking behavior as well as the measures can have electoral consequences. A large literature has developed in public administration and policy that assesses the determinants and validity of performance measures and their influence on the strategic behavior of public organizations. While recognizing the progress made by this line of research, we introduce a theoretical framework that accounts for the political context in which performance measures emerge and are implemented. Specifically, we claim that superordinate governments use these kinds of performance measures as a political discipline mechanism (PDM) to incentivize the behavior of subordinate governments. We present a formal model and derive a set of testable implications of interest to researchers on performance management and bureaucratic politics

Keywords: Performance Measures, Distributive Politics, Bureaucratic Control, Public Administration and Management