Person: Toral, Guillermo
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First Name
Guillermo
Last Name
Toral
Affiliation
IE University
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IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
Department
Comparative Politics
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Publication Political Bureaucratic Cycles: How Politicians’ Responses to Electoral Incentives and Anti-Corruption Policies Disrupt the Bureaucracy and Service Delivery around Elections(SSRN, 2019-08-24) Toral, Guillermo; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75A vast literature has studied political cycles in economic outcomes and economic policy tools (political business and political budget cycles, respectively). I identify a related phenomenon, which I call political bureaucratic cycles: electoral cycles in the hiring and firing of bureaucrats and in the activities of public employees, which emerge as a result of the combination of electoral incentives and legal rules imposed to limit the use of public employment for electioneering. Empirically, I leverage administrative, identified, contract-level data on the universe of municipal employees in Brazil between 2002 and 2016 to measure political bureaucratic cycles. Hires and dismissals of municipal personnel show markedly cyclical patterns around elections, which are shaped by both incumbents’ electoral incentives and their reaction to well-meaning anti-corruption policies that constrain hiring and firing around elections. Cycles are most pronounced for temporary bureaucrats but are also detectable for civil service bureaucrats, which counters the received wisdom that civil service regimes isolate bureaucrats from political dynamics. Hiring and firing around elections are targeted at less educated people, which is consistent with political bureaucratic cycles partly responding to clientelistic strategies. Consistent with the clientelistic use of public employment, and the legal rigidities imposed on hiring around elections, pre-natal check-ups (a key output of the healthcare bureaucracy) are systematically lower around elections. Findings are grounded on, and complemented with, in-depth interviews with prosecutors, politicians and bureaucrats conducted in 7 states. The paper contributes to bridging the gap between the literatures on political budget/business cycles and on clientelism, two fields that have rarely been linked before.Publication Information, oversight, and compliance: A field experiment on horizontal accountability in Brazil(2019-06-26) Toral, Guillermo; SSRN; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Does the provision of information about local bureaucracies to the politicians who oversee them decrease irregularities and improve bureaucratic effectiveness? Information interventions are appealing because of their solid microeconomic foundations and their relatively low costs. However, recent experimental studies of information campaigns aimed at fostering vertical accountability (between voters and politicians) have found mixed results. Providing information to politicians directly could be more powerful, given politicians’ direct responsibility for allocating and managing resources. Information may be particularly effective when provided by auditing institutions, given politicians’ susceptibility to sanctions by these horizontal accountability actors. I partnered with the audit court of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte to experimentally study the effects of informing local politicians (both in government and in the opposition) about irregularities and performance in the bureaucracies they oversee. Outcomes are measured using administrative payroll data, a face-to-face survey of bureaucrats, and an online survey of politicians. Preliminary results suggest the treatment reduced the share of workers hired under temporary contracts, increased knowledge about rules among politicians, and changed politicians’ sense of accountability pressure from the state audit court