Neutral technocrats or ideological policy-seekers? Studying the substantive policy preferences of ministerial civil-servants across countries, ministries, and time

Civil servants in ministries play a crucial part in the policy-making process. Although we know a lot about what civil servants want organizationally, we know almost nothing about their substantive policy preferences. We address this gap by arguing and showing empirically that bureaucrats a) do have substantive policy and ideological preferences and b) that these preferences differ systematic across ministries. Bureaucrats in Ministries of Finance, Ministries of Education, or Ministries of Social Affairs, for example, differ considerably in their policy stances. Going further, and integrating public administration and political economy literature, we identify three possible causal mechanisms that explain why bureaucrats’ preferences differ across ministries: they hire different people, socialize their civil servants differently, and are connected to different stakeholders. We substantiate our arguments empirically by analyzing the policy preferences of ministerial civil servants using individual-level survey data. We apply multilevel models to cross-country survey data as well as to longitudinal data from Germany on (elite) civil servants. The findings have a number of important implications: First, it contributes to the long and ongoing debate on the political nature of bureaucracies and the relationship between elected politicians and appointed bureaucrats. Second, it implies that it matters for the content of a policy (e.g. their distributive profile, time horizon, and costs) which civil servant from which ministry ‘holds the pen’ in the policy process. Overall, this paper contributes to our general understanding of the politics of policy-making, engaging with political science and public administration research.