Lights and Shadows of the Contests for Public Senior Management in the National Public Employment System (SINEP) of the APN of the Argentine Republic between 2017 and 2019

Abstract

Among the main difficulties that have been encountered in the processes of institutionalization of public senior management systems of the Argentine National Public Administration (governed by the National Public Employment System) in the last twenty years is the replacement of meritocratic mechanisms for the coverage of these positions (the contests) by direct transitory appointments of the political authorities. But the management of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), from the year 2017, restored (partially) the contests. The present work specifically addresses this new aspect of the current situation in order to evaluate the quality of this implementation (of the contests), trying to estimate progress and/or continuities in relation to the aforementioned deficiency. For this, it deploys two strategies: it investigates the link between the winners of the contests and the previous transitory designations, and estimates the level of effective opening of the contests, that is, the percentage of winners who came from outside the APN. As is clear from their results, despite procedural changes, there are still strong indications of the continuity of discretionary appointments