000			01703nam a22001457a 4500
999			_c525286 _d525286
008			240221b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
100			_aDorp, Erik-Jan Van _950014
245			_aThe practice and politics of secretary general appointments
260			_aAmerican Review of Public Administration
300			_a53(5-6), Jul-Aug, 2023: p.182-194
520			_aThe 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. – Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02750740231155408
773			_aAmerican Review of Public Administration
906			_aPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
942			_cAR