In recent years, there has been increasing interest in whether and how bureaucratic
effectiveness contributes to development. Just what makes for an effective bureaucracy and …

Despite the importance of politicians, empirical work rarely examines who decides to enter
politics and why. This survey presents conceptual issues in measuring political entry; …

In all modern bureaucracies, politicians retain some discretion in public employment
decisions, which may lead to frictions in the selection process if political connections …

A common causal identification strategy in political science is selection on observables. This
strategy assumes one observes a set of covariates that is, after statistical adjustment …

When and how do governments deliver public goods and services in response to citizen
preferences? We review the current literature on government responsiveness, with a focus …

This article reviews the literature on the politics of bureaucracy in the developing world, with
a focus on service delivery and bureaucratic performance. We survey classic topics and …

Politically-driven corruption is a pervasive challenge for development, but evidence of its
welfare effects are scarce. Using data from a major rural road construction programme in …

We study how political turnover in mayoral elections in Brazil affects public service provision
by local governments. Exploiting a regression discontinuity design for close elections, we …

The administrative state is a powerful tool because it can control the population and, in
moments of crisis, help leaders put down popular threats to their rule. But a state does not …

Scholars of distributive politics often emphasize partisanship and clientelism. However, as
Jennifer Bussell demonstrates in Clients and Constituents, legislators in" patronage …