CREDIBLE COMMITMENTS IN POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION A Dissertation by NICOLAI PETROVSKY Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2009 Major Subject: Political Science CREDIBLE COMMITMENTS IN POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION A Dissertation by NICOLAI PETROVSKY Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Co-Chairs of Committee, Kenneth J. Meier Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson Committee Members, Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon James R. Rogers Lori L. Taylor Interim Head of Department, James R. Rogers May 2009 Major Subject: Political Science iii ABSTRACT Credible Commitments in Policy and Administration. (May 2009) Nicolai Petrovsky, B.S., University of Konstanz, Germany; M.S., University of North Texas Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Kenneth J. Meier Dr. Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson The theoretical argument of this dissertation contains a set of conditions under which professional personnel systems serve as political tools to make government efforts to implement public policies credible and reliable, and thus to protect democracy. The dissertation includes two empirical applications, which constitute critical cases for the theoretical argument. The first is a case study of the new merit system for the higher echelons of Mexico’s federal public administration. It is based on Mexican academic literature, elite interviews conducted in November 2007, and quantitative analysis of personnel data. The second is a test of the hypothesis that officers operating under merit system protections create stability, using panel data on English local governments in the 1950s and 1960s. It is based on analysis of a panel covering budget shares and political party control. Overall, the findings from both empirical applications lend support to the theoretical argument. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my committee co-chairs, Ken Meier and Misha Taylor-Robinson, for their fantastic mentoring. I would like to thank them and my other committee members, Maria Escobar-Lemmon, Jim Rogers, and Lori Taylor, for their guidance and support at all stages of this dissertation. Further, I would like to thank the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University for providing full financial support during the two years I spent studying in College Station, the faculty and graduate students for making this a very rewarding time, and all of the departmental staff for their help with matters small and large. I am thankful to everyone who generously gave me their time and support during my field research in Mexico City, particularly my interviewees and Adriana Carrillo Hernández. Also I would like to thank Cardiff Business School and my colleagues there for providing a hospitable and stimulating environment, which made it possible for me to write this dissertation besides working there full time. Finally, I am grateful to my parents for their encouragement and support. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................. viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 1 II MERIT CIVIL SERVICES AS CREDIBLE COMMITMENT DEVICES.............................................................. 7 The “temptation of the trough”..................................................... 9 The problem of credible commitment........................................... 13 The merit civil service as a commitment device ........................... 31 A stark evolutionary model of merit civil service reform and survival ......................................... 47 Outlook: empirically investigating credible commitment ................................................................... 68 III A CREDIBLE COMMITMENT TO NEUTRAL COMPETENCE? AN INVESTIGATION INTO MEXICO’S NEW FEDERAL MERIT CIVIL SERVICE...................................... 70 Enduring legacies of Mexico’s history—causes of distrust and constraints on reform ............................................ 73 An acute and growing credibility problem.................................... 81 The development of Mexico’s federal public administration........................................................ 83 The fruit of cooperation: the Federal Merit System Law ..................................................... 99 vi CHAPTER Page Are there differences in commitment through the new merit civil service between departments? A quantitative exploration................................................................ 103 The difficulty of creating commitment: the first years of the new federal merit civil service ........................................................................ 110 A tale of two chambers: the attempts at introducing merit systems for congressional staff in both houses of the Mexican congress ....................................... 115 Conclusion: tentative steps toward credible commitment in a difficult environment ................................................................... 122 IV DO OFFICERS PROTECTED BY MERIT RULES CREATE STABILITY? A TEST USING PANEL DATA ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1949-67 .............. 125 A primer on pre-reform local government in England and Wales ............................................... 126 The search for party effects in British local government............... 133 Research design, data, and methods ............................................. 136 Findings....................................................................................... 142 Conclusions ................................................................................. 146 V CONCLUSION ................................................................................. 148 A lesson and an outlook............................................................... 151 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 154 APPENDIX A ....................................................................................................... 171 APPENDIX B........................................................................................................ 172 VITA..................................................................................................................... 188 vii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 Entry game without and with credible commitment......................... 15 Figure 2 Entry game with an irrevocable commitment device ....................... 18 Figure 3 Nuclear deterrence game without and with credible commitment .... 21 Figure 4 The commitment problem faced by intending non-immigrant visitors .................................................... 25 Figure 5 Politicians’ commitment problem ................................................... 29 Figure 6 The prisoners’ dilemma .................................................................. 50 Figure 7 Department-by-department comparison of within-department tenure (in years) of the people in posts that fall under the new merit civil service rules (box plots—middle of box is the median) ....................................... 107 viii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1 Summary statistics for the estimation sample shared by all models—401 observations on 137 local governments ............................................................... 141 Table 2 Results of autoregressive models explaining the left/right ratio ....... 143 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Government is necessary for civilization, and its most basic functions such as defense against foreign threats, protection against violence domestically, and the enforcement of contracts underpin the ability of ordinary citizens to specialize and cooperate in ever more complex ways, improving their material, intellectual, and spiritual well-being. Government provision of education helps to foster attitudes among citizens that are conducive to the maintenance of a functioning civilization, as well as providing opportunities for those assigned a less favorable lot by the lottery of birth. Amongst all forms of government, democracies fare best in delivering these basic functions (for instance, see Przeworski et al. 2000); indeed only in democracies are there any mechanisms that can guarantee the delivery of these functions in a sustained manner. Yet even in the most consolidated and enthusiastically supported democracy, dangers remain that have the potential to unravel all the civility and prosperity accumulated over generations. At the heart of these lie the temptations of elected officials to further their own interests above and beyond the rewards they obtain in a democracy when they faithfully provide public goods. While democratic elections can remove such officials, there is no guarantee that their replacements will do any better. In ____________ This dissertation follows the style of the American Political Science Review.