Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development Traveling Agents: Political Change and Bureaucratic Turnover in India

Politicians face high-powered electoral pressures while bureaucrats face longer-term, low-powered incentives. Given constitutional constraints, what incentives do politicians employ to control bureaucrats and how do bureaucrats respond to such incentives? We address these issues using a simple model where politicians use posts of varying importance to motivate bureaucrats, who respond by investing in skill or political loyalty to get important posts. Using data from the Indian Administrative Service, we \u85nd evidence for several key implications of the framework. State Chief Ministers frequently transfer bureaucrats upon entering o ¢ ce. High-skilled o ¢ cers face less frequent transfers and lower variability in post importance due to political change. District transfer patterns suggest that Chief Ministers use local politicians from their own party as an alternative means to control bureaucrats. Consistent with such selective district transfers, there is no robust evidence of a negative impact of such politically-induced transfers on district-level policy implementation outcomes