Bureaucrats in Parliament:Theory and Evidence on Its Determinants in Germany

This paper addresses the personal linkages between the public administration and the legislaturethat emerge because public servants pursue a political mandate. There are concernsthat the strong representation of bureaucrats in many Western parliaments compromises theconstitutionally proposed political neutrality of the public service and generates a conictof interest. We present a cost-benet calculus and analyze specic legal provisions for theGerman Laender to understand the selection of public servants into parliaments. Based ona novel data set, we nd that incompatibility rules decrease and abeyance compensationincreases the fraction of public servants in Laender parliaments.