Article Abstract: In developing countries incumbents commonly exercise political influence over bureaucrats through monitoring or patronage hiring. We investigate a new politicization channel: a
phenomenon where bureaucrats join political parties while in office. First, with a regression
discontinuity design and administrative data on the universe of Brazilian municipal bureau
crats, we identify an incumbency advantage in their politicization. Second, we find larger
effects for a special set of bureaucrats: the ones that interviewed households for enrollment
into Bolsa FamÃlia (BF). Third, we show that these effects are even stronger for interviewers
highly exposed to voters, and in municipalities where BF was expanded. Our findings suggest a policy-driven logic for this politicization: voter-facing bureaucrats who deliver salient
policies accumulate electoral capital which is converted into rents by joining the incumbent
political networks.
The Politicization of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Brazil was authored by Anderson Frey and Rogerio Santarrosa. It was published by Chicago in JOP in 2025 est..
