Frontiers of Research on Bureaucratic Politics and Management Mini-Conference: Discretion, Incentives, and Effectiveness

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Part of Mini-Conference

• Frontiers of Research on Bureaucratic Politics and Management

Session Description

Bureaucratic discretion is necessary both for effective execution of hard-to-monitor tasks, but also a source of rents and discrimination. The papers in this panel seek to examine the interaction of discretion and structural incentives and attempts to alter same. As a result they collectively help shed light on when discretion may be a net positive, and when a net negative, in less institutionalized settings - and thus what may be both gained and lost in attempts to reform bureaucracies. Bautista-Chavez explores how transnational coalitions of mid-level bureaucrats in the US & Mexico exercise their discretion to shape - and arguably make - policy, while Gonzalez exploits a change in legal protections for suspects in Brazil to explore when and why police officers forward what they perceive to be justice outside the law, through violent “extralegal vigilantism”. Honig as well as Williams & Yecalo-Tecle attempt to build broader theoretic architecture with projects that draw on original empirics (in Thailand and Ghana & Zambia, respectively) in exploring the performance implications of the interaction of bureaucrats’ motivation and management practice (Honig) and pay-for-performance type civil service reforms (Williams & Yecalo-Tecle).

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Individual Presentations

• Entrepreneurs, Reputations, and Shocks: Transnational Bureaucratic Cooperation - Angie Maritza Bautista-Chavez, Arizona State University

• Mission-Driven Bureaucrats: Performance & Promotion Tension in Thailand & Beyond - Dan Honig, University College London

• The (Non-)Implementation of Incentive Schemes: 30 Years of Civil Service Reforms - Martin J. Williams, University of Oxford; Liah Yecalo-Tecle

Chair

• Pia Raffler Harvard University

Discussants

• George A. Krause University of Georgia

• Pia Raffler Harvard University