Politicization in the Executive Triangle Across Countries: An Analysis Based on Career Data

The question of the politicisation of the bureaucracy is a core topic in public administration scholarship. While it is highly relevant, it is difficult to measure empirically. To obtain valid results, a prosopographic approach based on career data has recently emerged as a suitable method of measuring politicisation. Using this approach, politicisation is measured by various markers indicating career-related proximity to politics and political parties. Previous empirical studies have mostly examined the phenomenon for individual countries, focussing exclusively on top bureaucrats rather than the entire executive triangle comprising ministers, ministerial advisers and top bureaucrats. In our paper, we address these two research gaps. We present a new method for measuring politicisation across the entire executive triangle and between countries. This method helps identifying patterns of politicisation – both across the three types of actors in the executive triangle and across more than 30 countries. The data comes from the work of Working Group 2 of the EU COST Action CoREx (Comparative Research on the Executive Triangle).