Bureaucrats in Parliament: Theory and Evidence on its Determinants in Germany

Abstract

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public administration and the legislature that emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concerns that the strong representation of bureaucrats in many Western parliaments compromises the constitutionally proposed political neutrality of the public service and generates a con ict of interest. We present a cost-benet calculus and analyze specic legal provisions for the German Laender to understand the selection of public servants into parliaments. Based on a novel data set, we nd that incompatibility rules decrease and abeyance compensation increases the fraction of public servants in Laender parliaments.Political selection, parliamentary election, public servants, incompatibility