A taste for government employment also rests on its political flavor

Abstract

The global experience of political polarization, and politicians' attacks on democratic institutions, render individuals' identification with the governing coalition, or with its opposition, a likely antecedent of their attraction to work in government. This article examines to what extent individuals' partisan alignment with the governing coalition, and perceptions of its actions as a threat to democracy, shapes attraction to government jobs. Findings are based on a two‐stage survey with 1861 Israeli panel respondents, aged 21–30, carried out during the government's attempt to undermine the legal system (hereafter: the Judicial Overhaul), and a follow‐up survey experiment with 1211 of the respondents. Against the politically neutral explanations of previous research, we show that partisan alignment affects the propensity to choose a job in a government ministry versus other sectors. We find mixed evidence in support of the proposition that perceptions of the Judicial Overhaul as a threat to democracy underlie this effect.