Political Instability and Public Administration Attractiveness in Developing Countries

Public administration must attract professionals—particularly those with tertiary education—to deliver goods and services effectively. What factors make public administration appealing to these individuals today? While previous research has examined the effects of politicians’ state-building efforts and professionals’ personal economic and pro-social motivations, my focus will be on how the political context influences their decision-making. Specifically, this document investigates whether frequent changes in ministry leadership diminish the attractiveness of public administration, particularly in contexts with lower job stability. To examine professional’s current job preferences, I employed a multi-method approach. First, I explored the generalizability of the relationship between minister turnover and the attractiveness of public administration across a group of approximately 20 countries. Next, I assessed the causality of this relationship using a conjoint survey experiment conducted between December 2023 and August 2024, targeting late undergraduates and recent graduates in Peru. Finally, to disentangle the causal mechanisms between these two variables, I conducted interviews in three countries that have experienced increased minister turnover in recent years while offering varying levels of job stability to their national-level bureaucrats and prospective bureaucrats: Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Overall, the key finding of this study is that political instability, as measured by minister turnover, affects the attractiveness of public administration for professionals in developing countries. Surprisingly, this effect is not mitigated by higher levels of bureaucratic institutionalization. This finding raises important questions about the role of political instability in the functioning of the state and the provision of public goods, particularly regarding the capacity of institutions to mediate conflicts and protect citizens from the adverse effects of political struggles, which have intensified in recent years.