Between politics and bureaucracy: a systematic literature review on the dynamics of public appointments

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-09-2022-0200
• Published date: 03 February 2023
• Date: 03 February 2023
• Pages: 152-170
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management
• Author: André Vaz Lopes,Diego Mota Vieira

Between politics and bureaucracy:

a systematic literature review

on the dynamics of

public appointments

Andr

e Vaz Lopes and Diego Mota Vieira

Post-Graduate Program in Administration (PPGA), University of Bras



ılia,

Brasilia, Brazil

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this article is to explain the dynamics of public appointments and present new

possibilities for research in this field.

Design/methodology/approach –The article is based on a systematic literature review from 2012 to 2021,

identified in Web of Science, Scopus and SciELO, in English, Spanish or Portuguese. To explain the dynamics

of public appointments, the following were analyzed: the nomination process; the motivations, objectives and

criteria used; the results and impacts of appointments; and the profile of the nominees. The study focused only

on discretionary appointments to fully public bodies and agencies.

Findings –The literature offers a limited explanation for the dynamics of appointments, by focusing on the

dichotomy between loyalty and competence. Despite this, studies suggest that different contextual factors,

such as administrative tradition or strategic choices, for example, determine the dynamics of appointments,

indicating that it is a complex process that goes beyond the simple discussion of merit or clientelism.

Originality/value–The article presents an unprecedentedanalysis of the literature on the dynamics of public

appointments and proposes an explanatory model that indicates that other factors, in addition to merit and

loyalty, should be considered relevant for the selection criteria, the nomination process and the profile of who

will be appointed. This model is useful both for the practical management of appointments and for the

advancement of theory in this field and should receive improvements and future empirical evaluations.

Keywords Public appointments, Political appointments, Bureaucracy, Literature review

Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction

Public appointments represent an important tool to move bureaucracy toward government

priority (Wood and Waterman, 1991), bringing the State closer to society (Flinders and

Matthews, 2010). On the other hand, when used only as a mechanism to garner power,

political support and reinforce patronage or corporatist initiatives, appointments can harm

public management, negatively impacting administrative capacity and long-term policies

(Andersen, 2018;Gallo and Lewis, 2012;Loureiro et al., 2010), becoming a counterproductive

practice for implementing government agendas and meeting the population’s needs

(Moynihan and Roberts, 2010). Therefore, understanding the dynamics of public

appointments is relevant both because of its implications for the management of the

public machine and in the formulation and implementation of policies of interest to society.

In the Weberian conception, bureaucracy exists to comply with the law, respecting the

democratic order, established by a hierarchical relationship between elected politicians and

bureaucrats (Weber, 1999). Elected politicians have the delegation to define the agendas that

will be prioritized, and therefore, it is legitimate that they can adopt incentive and punishment

actions so that the bureaucracy acts in the desired direction (Wood and Waterman, 1991).

An important possibility to exercise this power is to appoint and dismiss employees in the

IJPSM

36,2

152

Conflict of interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with this study.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-3558.htm

Received 15 September 2022

Revised 1 December 2022

13 January 2023

Accepted 19 January 2023

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 36 No. 2, 2023

pp. 152-170

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-09-2022-0200

decision-making system of the State (Nistotskaya and Cingolani, 2016). However, this power

is not exercised freely, and the rulers may face resistance from the bureaucracy itself, from

opposing groups, or from society itself, which can influence the institutionalization of

mechanisms that limit or control the decision-making discretion of the ruler of the moment.

For these reasons, appointments are a recurring theme in the study of public

administration (Lopes and Vieira, 2020). Despite this, there is little systematization of the

knowledge produced so far. As an exception, recently Cocciasecca et al. (2021) presented a

systematic review of the literature that analyzed studies on the topic according to four

categories: geographic area, theoretical framework, research method and organizational

definition. Even with the valuable effort of those authors, the work pointed out some

limitations, such as the adoption of a managerial approach, excluding contributions from

political science; and inclusion in the Academic Journal Guide of the Association of Business

Schools, as an eligibility criterion for articles to be reviewed, restricting search results. The

inclusion of articles only in English may have also limited the scope of this previous review.

Furthermore, the study focused more on presenting an overview of past research than

offering an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of appointments, including their motivations,

criteria, processes and results.

As a result, the authors indicated the need for more studies on the subject in Latin America

and the inclusion of other interdisciplinary perspec tives as a way to broaden the

understanding of public appointments. However, we understand that part of the

limitations pointed out in the work by Cocciasecca et al. (2021) resulted from their

methodological choices and their initial objective of just organizing the knowledge produced

and indicating possible gaps, without establishing a specific question to be answered by the

research. For example, inclusion in the Association of Business Schools’Academic Journal

Guide and writing in English as eligibility criteria for articles may have excluded many works

on Latin America, since much research in this region is written only in Portuguese or Spanish

and is not in the ranking chosen by the authors. On the other hand, the adoption of a

managerial approach may have limited the inclusion of perspectives on the subject brought

by other areas of knowledge, such as political science, as pointed out by the authors

themselves.

Thus, in order to fill the gaps left by these limitations, this article carries out a new

systematic review of the literature, with broader criteria for the search and selection of

articles, which also included manuscripts in Portuguese and Spanish, in addition to works

from other fields of social science. Moreover, our work aimed to offer a more robust

systematization of explanations about the dynamics of public appointments, seeking to find

more comprehensive answers about what determines presidential appointments.

We consider as public appointments those made by politicians for positions not included

in the traditional merit system of the permanent public service (Makita, 2022;Sancino et al.,

2017). In other words, appointments to management and advisory positions allow a margin of

discretion in choosing who is responsible for the appointment. In this study, we focus on

appointments only for exclusively public organizations, as we consider that there are

differences between the practices adopted in these cases and those used in state-owned

companies, which involve greater participation of the private market.

Although there is a vast literature that indicates ways to understand these appointments,

the works so far have dedicated themselves to exploring a specific factor or characteristic of

discretionary appointments in isolation, addressing, in particular, the relationship between

politics and bureaucracy to explain patronage strategies (e.g. Flinders and Matthews, 2010;

Panizza et al., 2019) and meritocracy in public appointments (e.g. Chudnovsky, 2017;Parrado

and Salvador, 2011). However, more recent works have pointed to the need to investigate

other motivations, interests and relationships for the choice of senior civil servants (Lopez

and Praça, 2018).

Between

politics and

bureaucracy

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