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

Lee, Don S.; Park, Soonae

Abstract

Scholars have debated over what constitutes effective ministerial leadership regarding administrative competence versus political influence. We 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, we examine civil servants' assessment of ministerial leadership in three central dimensions of public management: internal management, interbranch coordination, and policy formulation/implementation. Furthermore, we use existing variation in characteristics of agencies to test whether such variation induces systematic differences in civil servants' responses. We find 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 faced by ministers with different backgrounds also vary across agency types. Our analysis has implications for public management practice and agency control in presidential governments.

Citation

Lee, D. S., & Park, S. (2020). Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments. Public Administration Review, 80(3), 426-441. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13153

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 18, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Feb 19, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-05
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 20, 2022
• Journal: Public Administration Review
• Print ISSN: 0033-3352
• Electronic ISSN: 1540-6210
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 80
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 426-441
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13153
• Keywords: Marketing; Sociology and Political Science; Public Administration
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3782305
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/puar.13153
• Additional Information: Received: 2019-03-28; Accepted: 2019-12-18; Published: 2020-02-19