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ABSTRACT
How do career attributes affect the survival of post-communist ministers? We theorise that career attributes determine “desirability” of ministers, and therefore the length of their tenure. While political career attributes provide superior expertise and incentives, bureaucratic career attributes fall short on both “desirability” markers. Utilizing a unique data set of individual ministers in four post-communist countries in the first two decades after transition, we provide support for our expectations. We then demonstrate that while career attributes acquired before transition remain relevant for the stability of post-communist ministers after transition, their value wanes over time as post-transition career attributes gain predominance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 But see Blondel, Mueller-Rommel, and Malova (Citation2007) on post-communist governments; Fettelschoss (Citation2009), Fettelschoss and Nikolenyi (Citation2009) on socio-economic and career backgrounds of post-communist ministers.
2 In addition, both career attributes are among the most common in post-communist ministers. According to the data we collected, less than 3% of all ministerial appointments came straight from private or other public sector without holding any concurrent positions in politics or bureaucracy. In turn, 80% were elected parliamentarians and 12% appointed bureaucrats.
3 For the same approach, see Berlinski, Dewan, and Dowding (Citation2007) and Huber and Martinez-Gallardo (Citation2008).
4 Whenever more than one source was available, we preferred the information documented in the official sources, such as official government and parliamentary sources.
5 In an online appendix, we show that our results are robust to coding post-transition experience regardless of the time when it was acquired.
6 In the Appendix, we also show that our results are robust to an un-stratified model.
7 In Poland, we use the 2001 election as a cut-off.
8 In the robustness section below, we show that the substantive findings are robust to alternative cut-off years.
9 Given that all career experiences are binary indicators, the mean values refer to proportions.
10 In Poland, we use the 1997 and 2005 elections for cut-offs.
11 We prefer this approach to running the models separately for each country, which would put a hefty demand on the size of each country sample.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mona Morgan-Collins
Mona Morgan-Collins (PhD London School of Economics), is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at Durham University UK. Alongside her work on executive politics in the East, her expertise lies in historical democratisation, comparative suffrage movements and historical voting behaviour in the West. Her work appeared in the Journal of Politics and received American Political Science Association Best paper award. She is currently leading a project funded by an Economic and Social Research Council in the UK.
Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling
Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling (PhD London School of Economics), is a Professor of Political Science at Nottingham University, UK. His research concentrates on public administration and public policy in Europe and in developing countries. His work appeared in Public Administration, European Union Politics, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics and Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. He co-lead several projects funded by DfID and British Academy.