The Political Dynamics of Administrative Turnover: The effects of political change on the careers of top civil servants in Norwegian ministries 1884-2021

This master's thesis contributes to the growing body of literature on the politicization of administrative turnover in parliamentary democracies with a longstanding tradition of employing civil servants on meritocratic criteria. It does so by expanding on the findings of previous research that has found a connection between political change in the executive and the turnover rates of top civil servants, exploring to what extent the political dynamics that increase administrative turnover depend on the type of political change. Deploying Cox-Regression on a novel dataset on top civil servants in Norwegian ministries between 1877 and 2021 I show that a change in government increases the hazard of turnover among top civil servants by about 35%, and that this hazard is more than doubled when the turnover in government results in a political party taking office for the first time. Similar to the effect of a change in government resulting in increased risk for the individual top civil servant leaving office, if the change in power results in the party that hired the top civil servant leaving office, the risk of turnover is 25% higher than when the hiring party remains in office. This also implies that the negative effect of government turnover on the tenure of top civil servants is mitigated if the incoming governing party is the one that initially hired the civil servant. Moreover, top civil servants are not only more prone to leave their position directly following the change in government, but also generally more likely to exit their position when the government has a different ideological orientation than the government that appointed the top civil servant. However, not all types of political change are significant enough to impact administrative turnover. A change in just the minister without a change in government is insufficient to impact top civil servant turnover in Norway. For political change to impact administrative turnover in the ministries there must also be an ideological change. Whereas politicians' motives for politicizing top civil servant turnover should increase the more time has passed since the last change in government, top civil servants in Norwegian ministries exhibit patterns of being increasingly likely to stay in office after a change in government the more years that have passed since the last change in government. Lastly, the thesis finds mixed evidence that all in all, points towards more politicization of administrative turnover in Norway since the introduction of state secretaries in 1947 – particularly for the highest level of civil servants in the ministries. These findings highlight that there are nuances in how political change affects turnover rates among top civil servants that depend on new governments' trust in the political responsiveness and ideological compatibility of the civil servants. Suggesting that operationalizations of political change can affect the findings of studies on political events effects on administrative turnover in the meritocratic context, and thus that these nuances should be considered in future studies of politicization