Don’t hatch the messenger? On the desirability of restricting the political activity of bureaucrats
| Author | Jean Guillaume Forand,Gergely Ujhelyi |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629820984848 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2021, Vol.33(1) 95–139
ÓThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0951629820984848
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Don’t hatch the messenger?
On the desirability of
restricting the political
activity of bureaucrats
Jean Guillaume Forand
Department of Economics, Universityof Waterloo, Waterloo,ON, Canada
Gergely Ujhelyi
Department of Economics, Universityof Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Abstract
Many countries place restrictions on the political rights of government workers. This includeslim-
itations on political activities such as taking an active part in political campaigns. Are such restric-
tions desirable? We present a formal welfare analysis of this question. Bureaucrats’ political
activities affect voter perceptions of the government and this can have informational benefits.
However, they can also induce policy mistakes and are susceptible to ‘noise’ from some bureau-
crats’ innate desire for political expression. When politicians have limited control over bureau-
crats and successfully coordinate with voters, bureaucrats’ political activities can be desirable. In
most cases, however, banning politicalactivities is optimal.
Keywords
bureaucracy; elections; Hatch act
1. Introduction
Should a clerk in the driver’s license office be allowed to display political posters?
Should he be allowed to praise his political overseers in local media outlets? Should
he be allowed to solicit political contributions or distribute campaign materials?
Corresponding author:
Jean Guillaume Forand,Department of Economics, University of Waterloo, Hagey Hall, Waterloo, ON,
N2L3G1, Canada.
Email: jgforand@uwaterloo.ca
Many countries place limitations on the political rights of their government
workforce, and the precise extent of these limitations is the subject of ongoing pub-
lic debate and policy experiments.
1
In the US, the Hatch Act of 1939 and its 1940
amendment prohibited all federally funded workers from taking an active role in
political campaigns, including while off-duty. Over the years, courts have inter-
preted this to prohibit such activities as serving on a party committee, displaying a
campaign poster in the workplace, or writing a series of editorials on a presidential
candidate in a newsletter for government workers. Major revisions to this law were
passed in 1974, 1993, and 2012, in general relaxing some of the prohibitions for
some groups of employees. In spite of this, the number of new cases of suspected
Hatch Act violations has risen as recently as the period following the 2016 presi-
dential election.
2
The key argument for limiting the political activities of bureaucrats is that these
would disrupt the efficient provision of public services. ‘Efficiency’ here is inter-
preted broadly and includes maintaining the public’s trust in government. For
example, the US Supreme Court has noted a need to maintain not just the impar-
tial provision of services but also the appearance of impartiality.
3
The typical argu-
ment against the limitations is the value of government workers’ expressing their
views, which is both a basic right and a potentially important source of informa-
tion in politics. In evaluating the limitations, the Supreme Court explicitly estab-
lished a ‘balancing test’ where the employee’s ‘interest as a citizen in making public
comment must be balanced against the State’s interest in promoting the efficiency
of its employees’ public services.’
4
In these arguments, the inference that voters might draw from bureaucrats’
political activities plays a central role. The implicit assumption is that voters would
view campaigning bureaucrats as ‘bad news’ about government quality. However,
the underpinnings of this inference require clarification. First, while voters might
view a bureaucrat engaged in political campaigns as bad news, in principle they
could also view this as good news, for example, if bureaucrats are only willing to
campaign for high-quality politicians. Second, in equilibrium voters’ inference
about ‘government’ has to be consistent with the actual behavior of politicians and
bureaucrats. How would politicians and bureaucrats use campaigns if they were
allowed, what is the nature of voters’ inferences about government quality when
they see a bureaucrat who campaigns, and how do these inferences differ when
campaigns are banned?
In this paper, we propose a model for studying these questions, which requires
specifying bureaucrats’ roles in both policy implementation and electoral politics.
The model formalizes some of the conditions under which voters benefit from
bureaucrats’ political activities, and this helps us evaluate and extend arguments
made in the policy debates surrounding the Hatch Act. Under some assumptions,
our results provide a rationale for the evolution of regulations observed in the US,
from stricter to more relaxed rules. In most cases, however, we find that banning
political activities is optimal, even if voters cannot be fooled and are able to draw
sophisticated inferences about government.
96 Journal of Theoretical Politics 33(1)
Our model has three players, a politician, a bureaucrat, and a voter. In the first
period, a policy is implemented and the bureaucrat may engage in political activi-
ties (which we refer to as ‘campaigning’) in support of the politician. The voter
observes the implemented policy and whether the bureaucrat campaigns, and deci-
des whether to reelect the politician. In the second period, another policy is imple-
mented, and the game ends.
The politician may be good (share the voter’s preferences) or bad. In order to get
reelected, she may do two things. First, she can attempt to implement a ‘popular’
policy that the voter will interpret as a positive signal of her quality. Second, she
may instruct the bureaucrat to campaign. Campaigns improve incumbents’ elec-
toral prospects by generating votes directly: with some probability, the voter is
‘impressionable’ and reelects the politician if and only if the bureaucrat campaigns.
In addition, campaigns also affect elections because sophisticated voters draw infer-
ences from the presence (or absence) of a campaign. In some cases, campaigning
bureaucrats will be ‘bad news’ about government. In other cases, however, cam-
paigning bureaucrats can serve as a positive signal of politician quality.
Learning from campaigns is hampered by the fact that these only provide indi-
rect and noisy information to voters. While some bureaucrats, who we call ‘apoliti-
cal,’ only campaign when they are instructed to do so by the politician, others
(‘political’) are intrinsically motivated to campaign. Political bureaucrats campaign
irrespective of whether the politician directs them to do so, and this makes it more
difficult for voters to learn about the politician’s type from bureaucrats’ political
activities. In addition, campaigns can have policy costs: engaging in a campaign
uses bureaucrats’ resources, and may result in them performing worse on the job.
This can result in a worse policy outcome.
Analyzing the equilibria of this multidimensional signaling game formalizes
some of the existing policy arguments and introduces several new considerations.
First, campaigning bureaucrats need not be ‘bad news’ about government: good
politicians may use campaigns to signal their type to sophisticated voters. When
policy costs are low, this will tend to make bureaucrats’ political activities more
desirable. At the same time, low policy costs are not sufficient for campaigns to be
optimal. While campaigns can allow effective communication between politicians
and voters, there are multiple equilibria, and effective communication requires
coordination. The polity may end up in Pareto inferior equilibria in which politi-
cians rely on bureaucrats’ campaigns ‘too much’ or ‘too little.’ In this sense, allow-
ing bureaucrats’ political activities is optimal only if voters also trust that they will
be used effectively.
Second, we show that a key consideration in whether political activities can ful-
fill their potential benefits is the nature of the interaction between politicians and
bureaucrats. We compare two scenarios: weak political control, where bureaucrats
can decide to say no to a politician’s request for political activities, and strong con-
trol, where bureaucrats can be forced to campaign. We show that allowing political
activities can only be optimal in the first case. When politicians have strong control,
banning campaigns is always optimal. The reason for thisasymmetry is that the sig-
naling role of campaigns is inverted between the two environments: under weak
Forand and Ujhelyi 97
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