Panel T05-P01 Session 4 Politics and Public Administration Within Core
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4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal Panel T05-P01 Session 4 Politics and Public Administration within Core Executives Title of the paper How do Media Coverage and Legislators’ Interpellations Influence the Tenure of Political Appointees and the Political-Executive Interactions in Taiwan? Author(s) Tong-yi Huang National Chengchi University [email protected] Zong-xian Huang National Chengchi University [email protected] Date of presentation June 28, 2019 1 4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal Abstract How to work with media and the Congress is a vital issue for a minister, and if ministers do not deal with those two areas properly, they may lose their positions as minister and result in the discontinuity of the government policies. However, the function of media coverage and the effect of legislators’ interpellation on ministers’ tenure has not yet attracted serious scholarly attention. To fill this academic void, we examine the relationship between ministers’ tenure and external factors by collecting tenure data of 219 Taiwanese ministers from 2000-2016, media reports and legislators’ interpellations. Cox proportional-hazards regression results show that the number of news reports is negatively related to the tenure of a minister, but the effects of interpellation are less clear and consistent. Alongside the quantitative analysis, in-depth interviews also demonstrate the importance of a minister maintaining good public relations with the entire political and social ecosystem/sphere. Interview results also focus on possible cooperation between political appointees and bureaucrats. Keywords: Political Appointees, Media Coverage, Interpellations, Political-Executive Nexus I. Introduction Political appointees constitute the core elements of democratic and representative systems. Generally, newcomers lack practical experience and gradually lose leadership authority in the civil service, which can dramatically influence the performance of administrative agencies (Chang et al., 2001). As temporary public managers, political appointees have been described, in a mocking way, as “in and outers”, “birds of passage”, or “Christmas help” (Maranto, R. 2005:2-6). Hence, frequent turnovers of heads of government agencies may disrupt the stability of the bureaucracy and hurt appointees’ relationships with senior executives. These problems also play a crucial role in the effectiveness of governance (Kettl, & Fesler, 2005; Villadsen, 2016). 2 4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal Previous research suggest that the tenure of a minister could be influenced by personal, organizational and environmental characteristics. Research also found that the average length of ministers seems to be decreasing slightly over the years in United Kingdom (Cleary, H. & Richard R., 2009). But scholars still do not have full knowledge of what factors could explain the tenure of a minister. Most existing empirical research have focused on personal characteristics such as previous work experience (Petrovsky, etal. 2017) and organizational factors, including department attribute, party rotation and cabinet reshuffle (Dowding & Kang, 1998; Hahm, et al. 2013). Only few scholars such as Ali (2018) pointed out that turnover intent among public sector employees will be influenced by its outside environment, since organizations do not operate independently from its context. In other words, agencies or ministries are nested in the political environment, consisting of entities such as Congress, courts, other agencies and the media. Nevertheless, the function of environmental factors has not yet attracted serious scholarly attention. Besides the tenure of a minister, environmental factors may also influence the appointee- careerist nexus. A major mission of political appointees is to respond to public demand. Therefore, Resh (2014) outlined that the logic underlying presidents’ appointment is that political appointees can restrict bureaucratic discretion and shape the goal orientation of agencies to achieve presidential policy agenda. Nevertheless, sometimes this rationale of appointment will cause tensions between political appointees and career staffs when it comes to public relation crises or serious conflicts with legislators. While considering the systematic manifold impacts of the environment, a positive interaction between appointees and executives could enhance effectiveness of the organizations. As a new democracy, the case of Taiwan is a great field for the studying of the effect of environmental factors. First, Taiwan has been transformed from an authoritarian regime to a vibrant democracy since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) accomplished the first power transfer in 2000. Democratization pushed the government to start considering public opinion much more seriously than before. Additionally, legislative violence events, with “legislators brawling” being an example, occurred most frequently in Taiwan compared to any other country in the world. By brawling on the parliamentary floor, legislators engage in conflicts to try to get the media's attention and cultivate a personal vote to win the election 3 4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal (Batto & Weng, 2016). However, the frequent parliamentary brawls have repeatedly jeopardized the process of policy-making and exacerbated the stress of senior executives (Huang, 2018). Most studies regarding Taiwan's development of democracy focused on party politics and general elections (Chao & Myers, 1994), but the manner in which these elements (i.e. the turnover of political appointees) affect governance effectiveness still needs further studies. To further examine the relationship between political appointees’ tenure and environmental factors, such as media coverage and legislators’ interpellation, this article attempts to use Taiwan’s case to answer two questions: How do environmental factors affect the length of tenure of agency heads? How do these factors shape political-executive interactions? Following this section, we will first discuss existing evidence on external factors affecting the tenure of ministers. Based on this prior knowledge, we further develop hypotheses about the determinants of the agency heads’ length of tenure. The third section elaborates our data source and statistical methods. The fourth section will report and illustrate our results. Finally, we conclude with the contributions and limitations of this article. II. Previous Studies on Ministers’ Tenure Numerous studies addressed the issue of minister’s tenure or the turnover among political appointees (Chang et al., 2001; Cohen, 1986; Petrovsky et al., 2017). Most theories and researches suggest that personal factors are one of most important elements which could be used to predict ministers’ tenure (Fisher, 1987; Hahm et al., 2013). For example, Fisher (1987) used the dataset from the National Academy of Public Administration to analyze the background of political appointees in America. Their research found that most political appointees in the United States were white male, and their age were between 45 and 55 years old. Also, nearly 40 percentage of political appointees graduated from prestigious schools, and a quarter of them graduated from Ivy League schools. Joyce (1990) also used the National Academy of Public Administration dataset to explore which factors could affect the tenure of a political executive, and found that the larger the difference between current salary and salary in the next position, the shorter the tenure. Also, the political executives appointed by Republican administrations tend to have shorter tenure. Hahm et al. (2013) obtained different 4 4th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP4) June 26-28, 2019 – Montréal findings by exploring career related, geographical and educational background of political appointees in Korea. Hahm et al. (2013) showed that male ministers tend to have shorter tenures than female ministers due to symbolic appointment, but other factors do not have significant influence. Apart from demographic factors, previous experience of a minister is also crucial. Taylor-Robinson and Cardona (2007) conducted cross-national studies in four countries of Latin American including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica, and found that more than 67 percent of ministers used to hold positions in relevant departments, which means most ministers were experienced and were senior bureaucrats. Dull et al. (2009) found political officials who had political experience or used to be legislators served longer than non- experienced ones. The research of Petrovsky et al. (2017) also support previous findings, their studies showed that ‘outsiders’ who are recruited from outside the central government face more challenges and more hardship in retaining longer tenures. Also, party identification of a minister is a critical element because ideological differences may provoke policy conflicts and lower the political control of the president (Aberbach & Rockman, 1976). Whether the ministers and president come from the same party is also seen as an indicator in measuring the concept of ‘loyalty’ (Cohen, 1986). Some studies have focused on different attributes of the departments where political executives serve. For example, Cohen (1986) illustrated the potential conflict between different type of departments, since older departments