The Practice and Politics of Secretary General Appointments

• Autores: Erik-Jan Van Dorp
• Localización: The American review of public administration, ISSN 0275-0740, Vol. 53, Nº. 5-6, 2023, págs. 182-194
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The question of who is appointed to key administrative posts at the expense of whom lies at the heart of public administration research. In this paper, I study what career experiences have increased senior civil servants’ chances of being appointed to a secretary general position. The civil service politicization and core executive literatures suggest such appointments are impacted by loyalty, ability, and proximity to power. These hypotheses are investigated using a mixed methods research design combining quantitative analysis of the career paths of all active senior civil servants in the years 2000–2020 (n = 247) with 22 elite interviews with cabinet ministers and bureaucrats in the Netherlands. The main findings of this paper are that active affiliation with minister-delivering political parties and having worked in the prime minister's office significantly increased the odds of a candidate's appointment to an SG position, whereas managerial experience did not. These findings challenge the conventional theory of nonpoliticized appointments and unlock possibilities for comparative research on bureaucrats’ biographies.