The Double Nature of Subnational Bureaucratic Bodies: The Balance between Public Management and Political Accumulation. Proposal for Analysis with Evidence of a Federal Country

Abstract

Geddes (1994) suggests that meritocratic recruitment criteria are an obstacle for the clientelistic distribution of public service jobs and also undermine their use for electoral purposes. However, she indicates that no bureaucracy could completely do without them because it needs staff that is prepared to implement public policies. Provincial bureaucracies have different balances between the following two conditions: programmatic and clientelistic. The results show that provinces are distributed according to the weight that employment stability and human capital have within their administrations. The differences partially overlap with the distinction between marginal and metropolitan provinces; the last ones having had more weight in the new presidential electoral coalition. This study contributes mainly to the new findings on the subnational diversity of bureaucracies. The results obtained also have implications for the formulation of policies since they draw attention to the temporal horizons of bureaucrats and their management skills. Thereby, they must be considered in the optimization processes of the bureaucratic human capital recently undertaken by different levels of government.