Bureaucratic Capacity in Brazil and Argentina : Does Politics Matter?

1. Bureaucratic Capacity in Brazil and Argentina: Does Politics Matter? Celina Souza INCT-PPED and IESP-UERJ Sienna, May 6, 2014

2. Objectives • Analyze the process of bureaucratization and the construction of bureaucratic capacity in Brazil and Argentina • Measure the quality of the Brazilian bureaucracy in agencies in charge of four developmental policies (environment, infrastructure, industrial and innovation) • Creation of an index of bureaucratic capacity in Brazil (Index of Bureaucratic Capacity - IBC) • Capture and analyze the perceptions of bureaucratic and social actors in Argentina about the quality of their bureaucracy

3. Why study bureaucratic capacity and why compare Brazil and Argentina? The capacity of the bureaucracy is a predictor of what is likely to happen to public policies Brazil and Argentina began their bureaucratization process at the same time (1930s), their systems were quite similar but they followed a completely different path regarding the selection of their civil servants after redemocratization. Literature: State capacity and Evans and Rauch (1999; 2000).

4. The argument The difference between Brazil and Argentina after the end of the military dictatorships is explained by different political agendas Brazilians decided to write a new Constitution in 1988 to inaugurate the new democratic regime. The main goal was to rebuild democratic institutions. Access to public employment through competition and meritocratic criteria was part of the redemocratization agenda to distance the new regime from the previous one, based mainly on patronage. Furthermore, meritocratic criteria was seen as a requirement of advanced democracies In Argentina no new Constitution was written and in 1994 a constitutional amendment was approved with no major institutional change, except the constitutionalization of several international treaties for the protection of human rights, heavily violated during the military regime.

5. Structure of the presentation • State formation and bureaucratization in Brazil and Argentina and its relation to state capacity • Data and analysis: • Index of bureaucratic capacity in Brazil (IBC) • Perceptions of bureaucratic and social actors in Argentina about the quality of their bureaucracy • Discussion

6. Stateformation, bureaucratizationandtheirrelation to statecapacity • Tilly x Silberman • And what about Latin America? • Questions: • What were the differences and similarities in the bureaucratization processes? • Do different trajectories explain subsequent decisions about the rules for civil servants recruitment? • Both countries adopted a politico-technocratic criteria for recruitment, but why Brazil has opted for changing it and not Argentina? • Do similar trajectories alone explain why they distance themselves from each other? • Hypotheses: • Similar trajectories in the early 1930s but institutions created in Brazil survived but not in Argentina • Politics matter: rational actors (politicians) addressing issues of different agendas

7. IBC • Objectives • To capture the quality of the federal bureaucracy in four policy areas: environment, industrial, infrastructure and innovation • To capture differences among agencies

8. Dimensions of bureaucratic capacity and sources Dimensions: • Recruitment I: proportion of the higher officials in the agencies who entered the civil service via formal examination and competition • Recruitment II – proportion of higher officials with temporary contracts • Types of professionalization: • Generalist (English-speaking model) • Specialist (French model) • Internal promotion: rules for the promotion of civil servants • Accountability: civil servants fired for wrongdoing Sources: • Federal government of Brazil: several sites – 18 agencies and 28.578 higher level civil servants • Survey in Argentina: 18 interviews

9. IBC : Contributions Disaggregation of the index by policy areas – innovation, environment, infrastructure, industrial Disaggregation of the index by dimensions of bureaucratic capacity Take advantage of the availability of online data Little knowledge about who is and where is the “new” bureaucracy recruited by competitive exams Analyze the bureaucracy in charge of policy formulation and implementation and not the entire bureaucracy Proposition of a methodology applicable to other policies Identify outliers and explain why and what policymakers can do Different from other studies, we added state companies and appointed officials to high positions Different from other studies, we searched for a connection between bureaucratic capacity and developmental policies and not economic growth

10. IBC - Results

11. IBC by Dimension

12. BureaucraticCapacity - Argentina No data online or systematic information available Different from Brazil, it is not possible to construct an index or to analyze specific policy areas Survey (questionnaire) to capture perception Ex-post evaluation - answers were consistent: bureaucrats, politicians, scholars, members of think tanks.

13. Recruitment: % of civil servantsselectedbycompetitiveexamination

14. Civil Servants with university degree

15. Generalists x Specialists

16. Internal Promotion

17. Temporary workers

18. Accountability: civil servants fired for wrongdoing

19. Analysis: Braziland Argentina in comparative perspective • Two main distinct political decisions with consequences for the political and bureaucratic systems: • The writing up of a new Constitution in Brazil based on broad societal participation and on several instruments to legitimize the new democracy. Argentina´s political elites mainly addressed the issue of human rights • Starting in 1994, the federal government in Brazil created thousands of new jobs in the civil service and officials became to be selected by competition • By any dimension analyzed (recruitment, types of professionalization, internal promotion and accountability) Brazil scores better than Argentina, although in Brazil there are differences between and among agencies and policy areas. • Brazilian policymakers have large information advantage over Argentinean.

20. Discussion The research confirms the literature in bureaucratic capacity: its distribution is not uniform The concept of path dependency explains only partially why Brazil followed one path and Argentina another after redemocratization. To depend only on path dependence arguments without specifying different political environments and political agendas does not explain why rational actors took different decisions at the same critical juncture Because civil servants in Argentina, in particular higher officials, are not selected through competition, it does not mean that patronage alone prevails and that the government is unable to provide public policies. Its capability is selective, to policies high on the President´s agenda. Brazil now fulfills all the requisites of a Weberian bureaucracy whereas in Argentina public officials still face uncertainty and are subjected to electoral cycles.

21. Discussion Different redemocratization agendas guided political/rational actors in Brazil and Argentina Brazil looked towards the future and Argentina towards the past