Political Crisis in Central Government and Bureaucrats’ Responses in Provincial Government: The Impact of Governors’ Characteristics

Abstract

Scholars have debated the question of what influences bureaucrats’ policy implementation in provincial government, some taking the top-down and some the bottom-up approaches. However, less well understood in this debate is the impact of governors’ characteristics, particularly at a time of national political crisis. Given that their roles have been proven important for the performance of provincial governments, this is a significant oversight. To fill this gap, we examine the effect of governors’ political characteristics on provincial bureaucrats’ responses to the center by leveraging a unique setting, that of presidential impeachment in South Korea. Using original survey data on 655 civil servants from all 17 provincial governments, gathered as part of a representative survey, we find that bureaucrats are less responsive to the central government after impeachment. Our results show that this difference between pre- and post-impeachment is driven by several political characteristics, such as governors’ political ideology and tenure in office. Our findings have implications for the role of governors in intergovernmental relations and the management of provincial governments’ performance.