Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lee, Don S.; Park, Soonae
• 署名单位: University of Nottingham; Seoul National University (SNU)
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.13153
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 426-441
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE; cabinet ministers; policy alienation; turnover; systems; implementation; DELEGATION; capacity; POLITICS; support

摘要

Scholars have debated what constitutes effective ministerial leadership with respect to administrative competence versus political influence. The authors contribute experimental evidence to this debate through a unique survey design of endorsement experiments. Using original data from 949 national civil servants in South Korea, this article examines civil servants' assessments of ministerial leadership in three central dimensions of public management: internal management, interbranch coordination, and policy formulation/implementation. Further, existing variation in the characteristics of agencies is used to test whether such variation induces systematic differences in civil servants' responses. Findings show that that civil servants' attitudes toward ministerial leadership are asymmetric in nature. Ministers with civil service backgrounds are endorsed in all three dimensions, whereas ministers with legislative backgrounds receive increased support only for interbranch coordination skills. The levels of support for ministers with different backgrounds also vary across agency types. This analysis has implications for public management practice and agency control in presidential governments.