Bureaucrats Under Populism

39 Pages Posted: 25 Mar 2020

Date Written: March 2020

Abstract

We explore the consequences of populism for bureaucrats' incentives by analyzing a model of delegated policy-making between politicians and bureaucrats. Populist leaders prefer loyalist bureaucrats over competent ones, and this leads competent bureaucrats to engage in strategic policy-making: they sometimes feign loyalty to the current incumbent; and they sometimes implement the correct policy even at the cost of being fired. We show that feigning loyalty becomes more likely as the probability of a populist-loyalist combination increases. We also show that bureaucratic turnover is higher under populists when the bureaucracy is strong and higher under non-populists when the bureaucracy is weak.

Suggested Citation

Morelli, Massimo and Sasso, Greg, Bureaucrats Under Populism (March 2020). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14499, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3560307

Massimo Morelli (Contact Author)

Bocconi University ( email )

Via Roentgen 1
Milan, 20136
Italy

Greg Sasso

Bocconi University ( email )

Via Sarfatti, 25
Milan, MI 20136
Italy

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