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Personnel Politics: Elections, Clientelistic Competition and Teacher Hiring in Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2019

Jan H Pierskalla Open the ORCID record for Jan H Pierskalla [Opens in a new window]  and
Audrey Sacks
Jan H Pierskalla*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University
Audrey Sacks
Affiliation:
Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice, World Bank
*
*Corresponding author. Email: pierskalla.4@osu.edu
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Abstract

What is the effect of increased electoral competition on patronage politics? If programmatic appeals are not credible, institutional reforms that move politics from an elite- to a mass-focused and more competitive environment increase patronage efforts. This leads to an overall surge and notable spike in discretionary state hiring in election years. The study tests this prediction in the context of Indonesia’s decentralized education sector. The authors exploit the exogenous phasing in and timing of elections in Indonesian districts for causal identification. They find evidence of election-related increases in the number of contract teachers on local payrolls and increases in civil service teacher certifications, which dramatically increases salaries. These effects are particularly pronounced for districts in which the former authoritarian ruling party is in competition with new entrants.

Keywords

clientelismpatronagecivil serviceelections
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 1283 - 1305
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019

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