Top Bureaucrats Research Articles

Closed shutters or revolving doors? Elite career track similarity and elite sector transfers in Denmark

AbstractA crucial aspect of elite dominance in modern democracies concerns the degree to which different political elites share similar career paths and shifts between different elite positions. Similarity in career paths and transfers across elite positions are crucial aspects of elite dominance in modern democracies. This paper argues that there are limits to elite career similarity and sector transfer because of varying recruitment criteria and reputational cargo across different political elite groups. We argue that career similarity and transfers across elite positions are lower when recruitment criteria are exclusive. We also argue that acquired reputation may be a career liability limiting transfers into other elite groups. Empirically, we examine career trajectories and transfers across elite groups by mapping the full career of Members of the Parliament, top bureaucrats and interest group leaders in Denmark. We demonstrate that within the Danish political elite, career paths are relatively distinct and transfer few. Career distinctiveness and lack of elite transfers are especially pronounced for the bureaucratic elite, which is guarded by stricter recruitment criteria and on guard against reputations that might taint its image as a pure merit civil service. In contrast to other studies, our results suggest that the shutters between elite sectors are relatively closed. However, the few individuals passing through these most exclusive revolving doors may have a significant political impact.

A Costly Commitment: Populism, Economic Performance, and the Quality of Bureaucracy

AbstractWe study the consequences of populism for economic performance and the quality of bureaucracy. When voters lose trust in representative democracy, populists strategically supply unconditional policy commitments that are easier to monitor for voters. When in power, populists try to implement their policy commitments regardless of financial constraints and expert assessment of the feasibility of their policies, worsening government economic performance and dismantling resistance from expert bureaucrats. With novel data on more than 8,000 Italian municipalities covering more than 20 years, we estimate the effect of electing a populist mayor with a close‐election regression discontinuity design. We find that the election of a populist mayor leads to smaller repayments of debts, a larger share of procurement contracts with cost overruns, higher turnover among top bureaucrats—driven by forced rather than voluntary departures—and a sharp decrease in the percentage of postgraduate bureaucrats.

Selecting Top Bureaucrats: Admission Exams and Performance in Brazil

Abstract In the absence of strong incentives, public service delivery crucially depends on bureaucrat selection. Despite wide adoption by governments, it is unclear whether civil service examinations reliably select for job performance. We investigate this question focusing on state judges in Brazil. Exploring monthly data on judicial output and cross-court movement, we estimate that judges account for at least 23% of the observed variation in number of cases disposed. With novel data on admission examinations, we show that judges with higher grades perform better than lower-ranked peers. Our results suggest competitive examinations can be an effective way to screen candidates.

Perspectives on Public Financial Management Reforms in Ghana

This study explored the perspectives of reformers on public financial management (PFM) reforms in Ghana. This research, an exploratory qualitative study focused on unearthing the perspectives of reformers in PFM reforms. Reformers, as identified in this study were individuals in the PFM landscape who were middle level civil servants implementing reforms formulated by politicians and top bureaucrats. They try to enhance the management of public finances in the country by implementing the reforms. Participants were made up of 22 individuals involved in PFM reforms, purposively selected for one-on-one interviews from the civil service in Ghana. Another eight individuals participated in a focus group discussion. Public financial management reforms have been ongoing in Ghana for over two decades now. Findings showed that respondents believed in the reforms they participated in and reported levels of enthusiasm and dedication to achieving the aims of the reforms. The findings from this study indicated that the success of the roll out of PFM reforms depended not only on the known success factors such as the implementation arrangements and leadership but also on the reformers’ perspectives and their power of influence on the reforms amongst others. Keywords: public financial management (PFM), PFM reforms, perspectives

Does the cradle of power exist? Sequence analysis of top bureaucrats' career trajectories

AbstractTop bureaucrats are the nexus between politics and administration. Besides being the chief operating officer of the ministry, they are technical experts and political advisors to the minister. This makes them central actors in bureaucratic studies. Despite their powerful position, few have studied their path to power. Utilizing sequence analysis, I analyze the career trajectories of permanent secretaries, providing a rich measure of career paths. Denmark is used as a case of a European parliamentary system, and a novel dataset has been collected containing career information on permanent secretaries from 1925 to 2020. The analysis reveals five ideal‐typical career paths and illustrates how career trajectories have become more diverse over time. Fewer top bureaucrats are rising through the ranks within a single ministry; instead, there has been an increase in inter‐ministerial shifts and in experience providing political craft. Finally, the position is becoming a steppingstone rather than the final position.

Political Alignment and Bureaucratic Pay

Abstract Building on agency-theoretical perspectives of public bureaucracies, we argue that politician–bureaucrat preference alignment can have important implications for bureaucrats’ pay. We study such private gains to bureaucrats from their political alignment with elected politicians using detailed data on all 1,632 top administrators active in all Norwegian municipalities over a period of 25 years (1991–2015). Whereas existing studies generally rely on proxies for politician–bureaucrat political alignment, a rare feature of our data allows measuring it directly since 27% of top bureaucrats ran for political office. We focus explicitly on individuals at the very top of the administrative hierarchy and are able to separate the intensive margin (i.e., wage increases) from any additional effects at the extensive margin (i.e., new appointments). Using close elections for inference in a regression discontinuity analysis, we find that politician–bureaucrat alignment significantly increases top bureaucrats’ wage even in the Norwegian civil service system. This has important implications also from a theoretical perspective. Our results indeed go against predictions from models with policy-motivated bureaucrats, but are consistent with politically aligned principal–agent matches being more productive.

The Costs of Populism for the Bureaucracy and Government Performance: Evidence from Italian Municipalities

We study the consequences of populism on bureaucratic expertise and government performance. We use novel data on about 8,000 municipalities in Italy, over a period of 20 years, and we estimate the effect of electing a populist mayor with a close-election regression discontinuity design. We find that the election of a populist mayor leads to (1) higher turnover among top bureaucrats; (2) an increase in the probability of replacing expert with non-expert bureaucrats; (3) a decrease in the percentage of highly educated bureaucrats; (4) and lower performance overall. Moreover, we find evidence that the increased inefficiency of the bureaucracy is accompanied by proliferation of council and executive resolutions, in line with the recent literature on overproduction of laws and bureaucratic inefficiency.

How politicians see their relationship with top bureaucrats: Revisiting classical images

AbstractThe relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is an enduring concern in political science. Central to this debate, Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman (APR) in 1981 developed four images to characterize political‐bureaucratic relations. We argue that the one‐dimensional focus on roles in their images comes with important limitations. To deal with these limitations, we collect survey responses from 3,384 local politicians from four countries on seven dimensions of the political‐bureaucratic relationship. We then use cluster analysis to develop six images bottom‐up. Five of our images are largely consistent with APR's image II and III. Yet, they differ in the extent to which politicians trust the bureaucracy, consider them loyal, and see them as an important source of information. A sixth image is not consistent with any of APR's images. We find that both systemic (country, municipality size) and individual factors (ideology, position, seniority) contribute to differences in images. Overall, our images suggest that political‐bureaucratic relations vary more between and within political systems than suggested by APR's images.

Selecting Top Bureaucrats: Admission Exams and Performance in Brazil

In the absence of strong incentive schemes, public service delivery crucially depends on bureaucrat selection. Despite being widely adopted by governments to screen candidates, it is unclear whether civil service examinations can predict job performance. This paper investigates this question by focusing on a highly prestigious and influential set of bureaucrats in Brazil: state judges. We first explore data on judges' monthly output and cross-court movement to separately identify what share of observed performance is explained by judges and courts. We estimate that judges account for at least 23% of the observed variation in the number of cases disposed. Using a novel data set on examinations, we then show that, within cohorts of candidates taking the same exam, those with higher grades perform better than their lower-ranked peers. Our results suggest that competitive examinations can be an effective way to screen candidates, even among highly qualified contenders.

What determines senior civil servants’ responsive behaviors to ministers?: Applying mixed-methodology on the relationship between top bureaucrats and ministers in South Korea

ABSTRACTThis study investigates how the relationships between senior civil servants and ministers are formed and how the relationships thus formed shape these civil servants’ responsive behaviors toward ministers. We conducted in-depth interviews and surveys with high-level officials of S. Korean sociocultural ministries, and analyzed the data through mixed methodology to construct a grounded model of the behaviors of the officials vis-à-vis ministers. The results show that the civil servants’ substantive behavior varies from loyalty to tacit resistance, a consequence of the tension between bureaucratic conditions and relations with the minister. In the case of conflicts with ministers, however, senior civil servants tend to become quickly submissive in that they perceive themselves as implementers of ministerial policy and thus as needing to be adaptively accommodative to the political appointees with democratic legitimacy.

Political Alignment and Bureaucratic Pay

We study the private gains to bureaucrats from their political alignment with elected politicians. Whereas existing studies generally rely on proxies for politician-bureaucrat political alignment, a rare feature of our data allows measuring it directly since 27% of bureaucrats ran for political office. We focus explicitly on individuals at the very top of the administrative hierarchy, and are able to separate the intensive margin (i.e. wage increases) from any additional effects at the extensive margin (i.e. new appointments). Using close elections for inference, we find that politician-bureaucrat alignment significantly increases top bureaucrats' wage even in the Norwegian civil service system. Our results go against predictions from models with policy-motivated bureaucrats, but are consistent with politically aligned principal-agent matches being more productive.

Impeachment by Judicial Review: Israel’s Odd System of Checks and Balances

Abstract This paper focuses on a doctrine that the Israeli Supreme Court has developed since the early 1990s under which the Court removes officeholders from their position by ordinary judicial review proceedings. Although this doctrine is not founded on any formal constitutional settings, nonetheless it has had a significant influence on the relationships between the judiciary and the political branches, as it was the basis for the removal of several major political figures — including ministers and top bureaucrats — from office. The substantial rise of judicial power in Israel since the early 1980s has been documented by the literature of comparative constitutionalism. Yet this rise took place despite the lack of any meaningful formal constitutional guarantees of judicial autonomy in Israeli constitutional law. I argue that this doctrine of removal can serve to explain this gap. This practice of ‘impeachment’ by judicial review is unique to Israel. Therefore, it has hardly been studied by the comparative literature. It is, however, extremely common and influential in Israeli constitutional and political life. It also enjoys massive support from legal elites and the general public alike. I argue that one cannot understand the relationships between the courts and politics in Israel without taking this component into account. In this Article, I describe the development of this practice by the Israeli Supreme Court and its influence on the relationships between the courts and politics in Israel. I also provide a critical evaluation of the doctrine.

Governance and Management of State-Owned Enterprises in Zanzibar: A Proposed Model for Effective Performance

Abstract In Zanzibar, the status of SOEs is not as satisfactory as other countries. There has been a countrywide outcry on the performance of SOEs. The purpose of this study therefore, was to examine the governance and management of SOEs, highlight some benefits and challenges as well as propose a model for effective performance. Following the reviews of various literature and government documents, the study on hand has found that the governance of SOEs needs close revision regarding their management structure as there are roles conflicts between the top bureaucrats; the study also found that absence of SOEs policy has been a major bottleneck for the SOEs to perform at a reasonable level as no proper guidelines which direct the SOEs where to go and what to achieve in a specific time period. Furthermore, the study has found that the overstaffing of SOEs in one way or another puts pressure to the management to attain its intended goals resulting to low contribution in the country’s economy. The study recommends that SOEs need to be creative and innovative in their undertakings as they have to undertake diversification of their products in order to attract foreign markets significantly. It is also suggested that proper SOEs policy needs to be made in order to give proper directions to the SOEs so that the goal and objectives of their setup can be successfully attained.

Elite circulation and the convertibility of knowledge: comparing different types and forms of knowledge and degrees of elite circulation in Europe

According to classical elite theory, increased circulation is related to increased integration which is thought to increase elites’ power. Based on a comparative analysis of some European countries’ elite education systems, recruitment to elite positions and degrees of circulation – with a specific focus on administrative elites – this article investigates how certain types of knowledge may reinforce elite circulation and integration. The role knowledge plays in facilitating elite circulation is one element, among others, which may be significant in understanding the nature of power held by elites in various societies. 135 interviews with top bureaucrats, students preparing for administrative careers and teachers in the public administration in France, Norway and Britain constitute the empirical basis for this investigation. With an analytical approach focusing on knowledge content and forms of institutionalisation, I examine the competences that legitimise these three countries’ administrative elite positions, and their possibilities for circulating across areas and sectors. The comparative analysis shows how extensive, formalised general knowledge, like the one favoured in France, may facilitate elite circulation more than the more specialised knowledge in Norway and the more informal knowledge favoured in Britain by the training and recruitment systems there.

The French politics of retrenchment (2007–2012): Institutions and blame avoidance strategies

While the semi-presidential French regime and the reinforcement of ‘presidentialization’ under Nicolas Sarkozy have often been associated with the idea of disruptive and heroic changes, France’s post-crisis budgetary policy appeared strongly embedded in the previous commitments made by President Sarkozy and relied largely on measures of a gradual and low-profile nature without significant U-turns. In order to explain this result, the article emphasizes the effects of French institutions on government capabilities and on the potential allocation of blame and the related political strategies connected with the electoral cycle and timing. In addition, it also explores the specific characteristics of the French national crisis and its perceptions by top bureaucrats, as well as the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced French budgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizations or the European Union.Points for practitionersThis article emphasizes the importance of institutions and political strategies in cutback management. The main argument is that budget reduction policies are embedded in political and electoral constraints that strongly affect their design and choices. The article provides many empirical elements about the specific characteristics of the French national crisis and how French governments reacted to the 2008 crisis. It puts emphasis on the specificities of French political institutions and the strong exposure to blame. The French political strategies of blame avoidance are described between 2008 and 2012, as well as the nature of the external macro-constraints that influenced French budgetary policy, whether originating with markets, international organizations or the European Union.

What Does it Mean to be Part of the Elite?

Whether top bureaucrats are part of the elite or not, and to what degree their possible elite status is legitimate, will depend on how the elite concept is defined. Analyzing 81 British, French and Norwegian top bureaucrats’ arguments for belonging to the elite or not, this paper unpacks the elite concept and explores its meaning along a range of dimensions (organizational, prestige, education, social status, power, wage). These dimensions can be analyzed as indicating either an elite status delimited to the profession or exceeding it, as a societal elite. Rather than what might be expected, a clear contrast between anti-elitist Norwegian and elitist British and French bureaucrats, the comparative analysis of the interviews shows a variation between two different understandings of the elite concept: Norwegians interpret their elite status as delimited to the profession, and British and French bureaucrats define themselves as societal elites.

How a War for the Past Becomes a War in the Present

Nothing is new under the sun: whether in Soviet times, before, or after, was used and misused in Ukraine for numerous aims and occasions. In the 19th century, Ukraine followed the classic pattern of 19th-century revivalist nationalism characteristic of stateless nations (e.g., Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Ukrainians). Here the absence of the state predetermined the mode of action undertaken by social agents (the intelligentsia, for instance): their aim was to liberate their nations-in-the-making from the empires in which they found themselves. Their appeal to was part of the creation of the nation's Self, the formation of identity (in which was construed as the nation's memory), and the legitimization of the nation's right to existence and its claim to statehood. (1) The nationalizing state of Ukraine after the 1990s took up this tradition but with an important twist: the state was presented as--and itself became--the commissioner of the discourse and policies. Therefore, and historians were mobilized to perform a major task: to construct (or to reconstruct) a picture of the past that would explain the present and that would legitimize the new nation-state and its titular nation. History (which in many respects was readily and unwittingly confused with collective memory) became a part of civic education of the nationalizing state. The pattern of self-assertion after 1991 was the same as before, although the conditions were different. The resulting version of national was inevitably essentialist and culturally exclusivist in the sense that it construed the of Ukraine as the of ethnic Ukrainians, largely ignoring the other peoples who have inhabited the country's terrain. Its promoters presented it as a and as a part of the collective memory of the Ukrainian people. The retreat to this true history was also presented as an antithesis to die historical lethargy or amnesia imposed by Soviet rule on the Ukrainian people. It was accordingly challenged by die Soviet version of history--itself represented as collective memory in the same manner--which retained purchase among considerable portions of Ukraine's citizenry. Officially, that Soviet version was not banned by die state, and elements of it persisted everywhere--in school curricula, in lieux de memoire, in commemoration practices. In some regions, particularly the Donbas, Crimea, and southeastern Ukraine, the Soviet version was deliberately cultivated by members of the local elite. This promotion was partly the function of their own ideological preferences and partly a way for them to preserve Soviet-style patrimonialism--the top-down relationship between protective red directors, top bureaucrats, and their dependents. The Soviet-nostalgic variant of history/memory was also attractive (mostly to members of the older generation) because of the excesses of wild capitalism and the social crisis of the 1990s, and on account of the uncertainties of the post-2008 period, which featured a new social and economic crisis. For this part of the population, the principles of cheap bread and social benefits characteristic of the Soviet past, together with memories of the great country that was victorious in the Great Patriotic War, remained a normal part of their cultural baggage. (2) According to a sociological survey of the Ukrainian population in 2010, 46 percent of respondents regretted the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A majority of them (55-65 percent) lived in eastern and southern Ukraine. (3) Western Ukraine represented a contrasting attitude: there only 16 percent viewed the USSR's end unfavorably. It might be said that by the beginning of the 2000s, three major types of history/collective memory had emerged, two of which stand in direct opposition to each other. One is a national(ist) version, which emphasizes the exclusive role and position of Ukrainians in Ukrainian history. …

Negotiated Power: The State, Elites, and Local Governance in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century China by Sukhee Lee

Reviewed by: Negotiated Power: The State, Elites, and Local Governance in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century China by Sukhee Lee Nicolas Tackett Sukhee Lee. Negotiated Power: The State, Elites, and Local Governance in Twelfth- to Fourteenth-Century China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. Pp. xiii + 347. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0674417144. In Negotiated Power, Sukhee Lee offers a fascinating, detailed study of local society in Mingzhou 明州 (modern-day Ningbo 寧波) during the Song and Yuan dynasties, based on an extensive survey of a wide variety of sources, including local gazetteers, literary collections of local authors, and tomb epitaphs. Lee's particular focus is on the relationship between the state and local elites. As such, his book constitutes the latest response to the Hartwell-Hymes localization thesis, which describes the entrenchment in the provinces—over the course of the Song dynasty—of the elite families producing the top bureaucrats, in conjunction with a relative retreat of the state from the active management of local society. Some readers may feel that the book would have benefited from being framed more as a complication of Hymes and Hartwell than as an attempted debunking. Nevertheless, Negotiated Power stands as a valuable contribution to the field, especially insofar as it helps to clarify the evolving nature of the interface between the state bureaucracy and the dominant families of Mingzhou. The book is divided into four substantive chapters. Chapter One ("Elites, Locality, and the State") examines social mobility and family strategies among the Mingzhou elite. As one would predict on the basis of the work of Robert Hymes and others, the local elite included both officeholders and nonofficeholders. The percentage of officeholders in the Southern Song seems to have been higher than in other prefectures of China, undoubtedly a result of Mingzhou's proximity to the capital at Hangzhou. Although some branches of the most important families remained influential over successive generations, other branches declined, such that, by the early Yuan, a sixth-generation descendant of the twelfth-century chief minister Shi Hao 史浩 ended up in [End Page 413] slavery. Lee finds more interprefectural marriages in Southern Song Mingzhou than Hymes found in Jiangxi in the same period (28% of Southern Song elite marriages in Mingzhou were interprefectural, if one excludes those involving "directly adjacent" counties). To reconcile his data with that of Hymes, the author makes the intriguing suggestion that marrying locally—an important indicator of local entrenchment—may have been practiced more widely in the late Southern Song than in the early Southern Song. Alternatively, if one met marriage partners as a consequence of bureaucratic postings (as Lee demonstrates was sometimes the case), the Mingzhou marriage pattern may have constituted the natural outcome of a greater rate of officeholding. Chapter One also includes an interesting discussion of guanhu 官戶 ("officeholding household"), a status that provided a family with legal and tax privileges. As predicted by the localization model, even after the dramatic increase in competition for bureaucratic posts prevented most elite families from specializing in government service, such elites still strove to maintain some ties to the state, as one crucial element of a now more diversified family strategy. Chapters Two ("Local Governance in Southern Song Mingzhou") and Three ("Cooperation and Tension: Revisiting Local Activism") shift focus from elite mobility and survival strategies to the ways the state exerted authority at the local level. Lee specifically takes issue with the idea that the state retreated from local society after the Jurchen invasion. Though this issue has been addressed in some recent Chinese scholarship—by Bao Weimin 包偉民, for example—it has rarely been dealt with in the English-language literature (perhaps reflecting North American skepticism that statism could have unleashed the cultural and economic vitality witnessed in the Southern Song). Lee seems to exaggerate the claims of the localization model when asserting that it posits a "nearly moribund system of local government" (p. 19) and a "vacuum of power in local society" (p. 149). Nevertheless, the author's overall point is important. As he demonstrates, prefectural authorities in Mingzhou had ample funds to maintain local security forces, to manage water resources, and to construct or repair government buildings. Though locals sometimes took the initiative to...

Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome by Miles Pattenden (review)

Reviewed by: Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome by Miles Pattenden Wolfgang Reinhard Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome. By Miles Pattenden. [Oxford Historical Monographs.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. viii,154. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-967062-8.) This small book, a published Oxford doctoral dissertation, is remarkably conservative in the best sense of the word. The footnotes, a descriptive list of the [End Page 150] prinicipal manuscript sources, and the bibliography prove outstanding scholarship. But the author, now a research fellow at University of Bologna, refrains from demonstrating his historical competence through exhausting textual abundance and abstract theoretical digressions that unfortunately are considered state of the art by many historians nowadays. Instead, he tells a straightforward story in chronological order and explains events in terms of the characters and the strategies of acting individuals. Nevertheless, the book concludes with a thesis that is verified by this narrative with sufficient plausibility. According to Miles Pattenden, the trial of the Carafa in 1560/61 was not the necessary consequence of the crimes they had committed during the reign of their uncle, Pope Paul IV (155559), but a carefully planned and implemented strategic operation of Pope Pius IV (1559–65) to intimidate the College of Cardinals and to strengthen the absolute monarchy of the pope. It was during the sixteenth century that the College of Cardinals was reduced from a powerful senate claiming co-regency of the Church to an assembly of Roman top bureaucrats and foreign dignitaries ready to acclaim almost everything a pope decided to do. The Carafa were the most appropriate victims not only because of their prominence and their crimes but also because of their lack of skill in micropolitics. They had neither built up a reliable party of followers among the cardinals and the Curia nor secured the stable support of foreign princes. Consequently, Pattenden no longer considers the trial of the Carafa as a turning point in the structural history of papal nepotism. Many scholars believed that this dramatic event marked the end of the “great” nepotism of princes-to-be and its replacement by a “bourgeois” nepotism of mere enrichment and promotion to nonruling noble rank. Pius’s own nepotism shows that the system had not changed. But the papal families had to learn that it was absolutely necessary to build up a micropolitical security screen for the time after the death of their “uncle.” Nevertheless, the Barberini, after the death of Pope Urban VIII, apparently were to have a narrow escape from the fate of the Carafa—or at least were afraid of it. The first chapter presents a summary of the pontificate of the fanatic Paul IV, including his war against Spain and his prosecution of Cardinal Giovanni Morone. In the end he dissociated himself from two of his nephews when he was informed about their activities. At the time of the pope’s death, Giovanni Carafa had his wife killed for adultery with the consent of cardinals Carlo and Alfonso Carafa. Chapter 2 explains how the obscure Gian Angelo de’ Medici (no relation to the ruling dynasty of Florence, but a friend of it) was elected, why he needed to strengthen papal authority, and why the Carafa were the most vulnerable targets. Chapter 3 follows the careful preparation and execution of the trial, including the production of collusion in Italy and Spain. Chapter 4 begins with the desperate attempts of the Carafa to built last-minute alliances, demonstrates the essential weakness of the defense based upon Paul’s plenitudo potestatis (because that must lead to the acceptance of Pius’s potestas), and proceeds to the execution of Carlo and Giovanni Carafa after some pressure on dissenting cardinals. Chapter 5, the aftermath, includes Pius’s own nepotism and the reversal of the verdicts under Pius V. In the end, Pius IV, the pope of the successful conclusion of the Council [End Page 151] of Trent, turns out to be a conservative figure without any spiritual impulse and a shrewd political opportunist. Wolfgang Reinhard Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) Copyright © 2014 The...

The Politics of Becoming a Top Bureaucrat in the Thai Bureaucracy

“Top bureaucrats” refers to career officials who assume the most powerful positions in their respective government agencies. They become permanent secretaries of ministries, the army commander-in-chief, the national police chief, directors and secretary-generals of agencies, and CEOs of state enterprises, autonomous public organisations and the like. When senior bureaucrats jockey for top positions, they play politics. In examining this aspect of politics and the bureaucracy, it is pertinent to address the following interrelated questions. How and why does a senior bureaucrat rise to the top in the Thai bureaucracy? Is it a merit process, or is it largely the work of politics? These questions underpin the discussion and provide a basis for further extensive research into the political strictures and dynamics involved.