The professional profile, competence, and responsiveness of senior bureaucrats: a paired survey experiment with citizens and elite respondents
通过挪威的配对调查实验，研究高级官僚的职业背景如何影响公众和精英对其能力与政治回应性的看法，发现偏离职业官僚理想型会降低能力评价，且公民与行政人员感知存在差异。
Abstract How do the professional backgrounds of senior bureaucrats affect their competence and political responsiveness? This article fills a gap by examining these questions in a meritocratic context that accommodates nuanced but potentially consequential variations in the recruitment of senior bureaucrats. Using a paired survey experiment with citizens, representatives, and administrators in Norway, the article demonstrates that agency heads are perceived as less competent and—to a lesser extent—more politically responsive if their profile deviates from the meritocratic ideal of the career civil servant with mission-specific expertise. The article also compares perceptions between groups of stakeholders, filling another gap in the literature. Treatment effects go in the same direction across groups, but the results reveal a mismatch between popular and insider perceptions of bureaucracy: whereas citizens are practically indifferent, administrators are deeply concerned about the competence of an agency head who is a former politician rather than a career bureaucrat. Perceptions of substantive expertise are more aligned: all stakeholder groups view agency heads with mission-specific expertise as more competent and less politically responsive than generalists. Overall, the results demonstrate that variations in who is recruited to senior bureaucrat positions may either strengthen or undermine stakeholders’ views on good governance.