The Impact of Political Appointments on basic Public Services: A Tale from Brazilian Local Governments

Despite the gains made in the last 30 years, Brazil is still an unequal country, with high levels of deprivation. The government plays a key role in the provision of essential services, which a large share of the population cannot afford privately. Brazil is a highly decentralized federation where municipal governments have responsibilities in the design and implementation of public policy and enjoy considerable administrative autonomy. We study the determinants of the municipal governments’ efficiency in the provision of key services, using primary school outcomes at municipal level as a proxy for government performance. We control for a wide range of local characteristics and public sector inputs using yearly data for over 5,000 municipalities between 2006 and 2014, and focus specifically on the impact of the structure of local bureaucracy (i.e. the share of appointed vs. career bureaucrats) on performance. This is not well understood in Brazil, where similar studies have exclusively focused on the federal level, despite the fact that political appointments are known to be used as a clientelistic tool. Our preliminary results suggest that the structure of the municipal bureaucracy is a significant determinant of performance.