Political Accountability and Real Authority of Government Bureaucracy

Abstract

In a country with weak institutional constraints on the executive, the real power might belong to the government bureaucracy rather than to an autocratic leader. We combine the Aghion-Tirole deflnition of formal and real authority and Barro-Ferejohn model of political agency to study the relationship between accountability of elected o‐cials and the extent to which their subordinate bureaucrats have real decision-making power. Normatively, we show that the lower is the level of political accountability; the lower should be the level of real authority at the bottom of the government hierarchy. Positively, we flnd that in lower political accountability countries the political powers have less authority over the public administration. On the contrary, higher accountability countries have bigger governments in terms of administration employment. Our cross-country study supports these conclusions.