DOES PENDLETON’S PREMISE HOLD IN NEW AND OLD DEMOCRACIES ALIKE? POLITICIZATION AND PERFORMANCE IN THE U.S. AND CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE* 1

Merit-based career civil services are groundedin the idea that government will serve citizensbest if its of cials are hired based on their human capital and promoted based on their competence,instead of their ties to elected of cials. Politicalappointees, on the other hand are appointed for many reasons other than managerial competence. Agency executives appointed from within a meritsystem are expected to outperform short-termpolitical appointees, who lack their expertise,experience, and public management skills.Lewis (2007) provides evidence to support thisidea for U.S. federal programs. Our ex antetheoretical expectation is that politicization isalso negatively related to agency performance inother political systems. Yet there is no systematicempirical evidence whether this is holds for youngdemocracies, where executive experience mightmean experience in the ways of the old authoritarian regime. We therefore conduct the rst comparativestudy of this topic, looking at the U.S., Romania,Poland, and Hungary.