Turnover: How Lame-Duck Governments Disrupt the Bureaucracy and Service Delivery before Leaving Office

Toral, Guillermo

Publication:
Turnover: How Lame-Duck Governments Disrupt the Bureaucracy and Service Delivery before Leaving Office

dc.contributor.author	Toral, Guillermo
dc.contributor.ror	https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned	2025-03-04T15:11:32Z
dc.date.available	2025-03-04T15:11:32Z
dc.date.issued	2024-10
dc.description.abstract	Electoral accountability is fundamental to representative democracy. Yet, it can also be costly for governance because it generates turnover among bureaucrats (not just politicians) and disrupts the delivery of public services. Previous studies on the connection between political and bureaucratic turnover emphasize how incoming governments reshape the bureaucracy. This article argues that election losers also engage in bureaucratic shuffling before leaving office, and that this can depress public service delivery. I employ a close-races regression discontinuity design to demonstrate these turnover dynamics, using administrative data on the universe of government employees and healthcare services in Brazilian municipalities. The results show that the incumbent’s electoral defeat causes dismissals of temporary employees, the hiring of more civil servants, and declines in healthcare service delivery before the winner takes office. These findings highlight the political strategies of lame-duck politicians and the consequential bureaucratic politics that follow elections.
dc.description.peerreviewed	yes
dc.description.status	Published
dc.format	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Toral, G. (2024). Turnover: How lame-duck governments disrupt the bureaucracy and service delivery before leaving office. The Journal of Politics, 86(4), 1348-1367. https://doi.org/10.1086/729961.
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1086/729961
dc.identifier.issn	0022-3816
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3624
dc.issue.number	4
dc.journal.title	The Journal of Politics
dc.language.iso	en
dc.page.total	74
dc.publisher	The University of Chicago press
dc.relation.department	Comparative Politics
dc.relation.entity	IE University
dc.relation.school	IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.uri	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed
dc.title	Turnover: How Lame-Duck Governments Disrupt the Bureaucracy and Service Delivery before Leaving Office
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion
dc.volume.number	86
dspace.entity.type	Publication
relation.isAuthorOfPublication	ebc554d8-b4c5-4dc9-a13a-922d294cf59c
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	ebc554d8-b4c5-4dc9-a13a-922d294cf59c