Bureaucratic Turnover Across Levels of Government

Abstract

The incidence of patronage can vary widely across levels of government within a country. We present evidence of this in the context of Brazil, which has been the focus of most recent research on patronage. In particular, we find that bureaucratic turnover follows political cycles among municipal employees, but not among state or federal level employees. This is not driven by differences across levels of government in the composition of the workforce or in the labor regimes used. Thus, the most likely explanation is differences in institutional quality. Supporting the relevance of this channel, we find that post-electoral turnover is higher in municipalities with lower levels of institutional quality.