Parabureaucracy: The case of Mexico's “Servants of the Nation”

Abstract

In the context of limited state capacity and a politicized public administration, democratic backsliding tends to exploit preexisting deficiencies in the functioning of the public sector. Whereas staffing managerial positions with regime supporters is well-documented, less attention has been paid to the structuring and staffing of street-level bureaucracies under a spoils system. In this article, we use document analysis and in-depth interviews to analyze the case of Mexico's “Servants of the Nation” —a group of more than 19,000 former party members and sympathizers hired by the government to perform street-level tasks— as an example of “parabureaucracy”: an auxiliary street-level organization designed to perform a wide variety of tasks directly related to the executive's political agenda. We argue that parabureaucracies are designed to sideline formal administrative command structures for the benefit of the government in power but may also serve as a means to bypass stifled and dysfunctional traditional bureaucracies.