The Career Connection: A Comparative Analysis of Bureaucratic Preferences and Insulation

Career patterns in the public sector affect both the ability of officials to formulate preferences that diverge from interests in society and the insulation that allows them to pursue their policy preferences. A narrow recruitment base and shared training help form a prestigious bureaucratic elite conscious of its state mission. Low levels of circulation between public and private employment reinforce a state identity among officials ; low circulation among state agencies promotes organizational parochialism and sympathy for the agencies' clienteles. Merit promotion enhances bureaucratic autonomy ; discretionary appointment undermines it. Movement of retiring bureaucrats into business undermines insulation. In a comparative analysis of five countries, bureaucratic autonomy is structural and institutionalized in France and Japan and contingent and political in Brazil and Mexico, while the U.S. is an exception.