{"title":"Indirect accountability of political appointees","authors":"Christopher Li","doi":"10.1177/09516298211027229","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the indirect accountability of political appointees. The appointee’s quality is uncertain, and voters hold the politician accountable for the appointee’s performance. The politician has better information about the appointee than voters do, but electoral concerns induce the politician to make inefficient retention decisions. Specifically, there is over-retention of appointees relative to the social optimum. If the quality of candidates for appointment is low, then improving the pool of candidates can help reduce distortions and, in fact, it is in the interest of the politician to do so. I also show that more public information about the appointee reduces over-retention.","PeriodicalId":51606,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","volume":"33 1","pages":"383 - 396"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/09516298211027229","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Theoretical Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09516298211027229","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
This paper explores the indirect accountability of political appointees. The appointee’s quality is uncertain, and voters hold the politician accountable for the appointee’s performance. The politician has better information about the appointee than voters do, but electoral concerns induce the politician to make inefficient retention decisions. Specifically, there is over-retention of appointees relative to the social optimum. If the quality of candidates for appointment is low, then improving the pool of candidates can help reduce distortions and, in fact, it is in the interest of the politician to do so. I also show that more public information about the appointee reduces over-retention.
期刊介绍：
The Journal of Theoretical Politics is an international journal one of whose principal aims is to foster the development of theory in the study of political processes. It provides a forum for the publication of original papers seeking to make genuinely theoretical contributions to the study of politics. The journal includes rigorous analytical articles on a range of theoretical topics. In particular, it focuses on new theoretical work which is broadly accessible to social scientists and contributes to our understanding of political processes. It also includes original syntheses of recent theoretical developments in diverse fields.
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