INTRODUCTION

As we all know, state capacity is a broad and ambiguous concept that involves several dimensions: political, institutional, legal, territorial, administrative and technical. Generally speaking, the concept of state capacity is used to explain why certain states face more or less difficulties than others in achieving their goals. This apparently simple objective, i.e. to explain why a state succeeds or fails in achiev-ing its goals, involves complex and not trivial theoretical and methodological challenges.

Searching for support in the existent literature can be more a problem than a solution for the following reasons. Firstly, the concept encompasses a wide variety of topics, e.g. internal and external conflicts, conflicts between social classes or interest groups, how institutions affect the economy, state formation, political regimes, bureaucratic characteristics, taxation, administrative organization and legal systems. Each of these topics addresses different questions and hypotheses derived from different disciplines. Secondly, there is hardly any consensus on how to measure the several dimensions of state capacity. This means that methodological choices are not trivial. Thirdly, understanding the reasons for variations in state capacity requires not only comparisons among states but also among different policy agencies internal to the state itself. Fourth, if one takes the policy component of state capacity, certain dimensions are related to the design of

STATE CAPACITIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Rethinking the concept and the measurement of bureaucratic capacity

policies: information, rules, legislative approval, conciliation with private interests, legacies of previous policies and policy learning. Other dimensions are related to implementation, notably financial resources, as infrastructure and territorial coverage. Bureaucratic capacity is a necessary condition both in the design and in the implementation phases. Finally, a last constraint is that state capacity is a process. This means that analyses of it capture a moment in time, although certain capacities may last for centuries.

This paper analyses the bureaucratic capacity of Brazil’s federal government, mainly in terms of its quality. Instead of analysing bureaucratic capacity in the light of the literature on state capacity, as Souza (2015) has elsewhere, we searched for new avenues of research by taking up the challenge posed by Sartori (1984;

1970), Collier (1995) and especially Goertz (2006) of beginning an investigation by constructing a concept.

Goertz, based on J. S. Mill, argues that starting an investigation with concepts is a logical choice, because they are some of the main building blocks for constructing theoretical propositions. Goertz (2006) discusses how to construct substantive concepts and the implications for empirical (both qualitative and quantitative) research of different concept structures. Concepts, as defined by Goertz, are theories about the fundamental constitutive elements of a phenomenon, meaning the core characteristics of a phenomenon and their interrelationships. Goertz proposes the construction of multilevel and multidimensional concepts, constituted by three levels. The three-level concept is made up of a basic, a secondary and an indicator/

data level. The basic and the secondary levels form the theory of the concept while the indicator/data level is the connection to measures and data collection. The latter level is when one gets down to empirical data. The importance of this framework is that it allows for a more rigorous theory and method for investigating state capacities as a whole and bureaucratic capacity in particular. This is because the framework displays how components of one level are combined or structured to produce dimensions at the next higher level (the theoretical relationship in Goertz’s terms), hence overcoming several criticisms and gaps identified in the literature of state capacity. The framework also contributes to crossing the boundary between quantitative and qualitative methods by focusing on concept. This paper uses the three-level concept to analyse the bureaucratic quality of the federal government in Brazil in development policy areas.

Rethinking the concept and the measurement of bureaucratic capacity

1.1 – The concept of bureaucratic quality

State capacities may be defined as the set of tools and institutions available for a government to establish goals, shape them into policies, and implement those policies. Among state capacities, the quality and the professionalization of the bureaucracy is prominent in the literature as a way to predict how a public policy is likely to unfold. Bureaucratic quality can be conceptualized when different combi-nations of the following conditions are present: meritocratic recruitment; predict-able, rewarding long-term careers; rules for hiring and firing that replace arbitrary dismissals; the filling of senior positions through internal promotion; skilled pro-fessionals able to act either as an expert or as a generalist; propro-fessionals free of exter-nal influences; and control through administrative and legal rules (accountability).

To capture the importance of these several features, this paper proposes a concept of bureaucratic quality reflected in the ability to design and imple-ment good policies based on a family resemblance structure (Goertz, 2006).

This means that there are different combinations of conditions that enable a bureaucracy to participate in the design of and to implement policies. The family resemblance structure attaches the idea of equifinality to the concept, increasing the extension, i.e. the empirical coverage, of the concept. The key con-stitutive elements of bureaucratic quality are described in the next section.

1.2 – The secondary and the indicator levels of bureaucratic quality The concept of bureaucratic quality introduced above is disaggregated into four constitutive elements or dimensions, which, in turn, encompass the indicators calculated (IR_i, IF_i, IP and IA) in order to generate what we call Bureaucratic Quality Index (BQI), synthetized in Figure 1.

The BQI was crafted to capture the main dimensions of the quality of Brazil’s federal bureaucracy, and was calculated assessing development policies in four areas:

environmental, industrial, infrastructure and innovation. What was sought with the construction of this indicator was to highlight differences between government agencies regarding their ability to participate in the design and implementation of policies.

According to Goertz (2006), once a preliminary idea has been formed about a concept at the basic level one can begin to construct a multidimensional and multilevel concept and, while it is possible to construct hybrid structures, most

STATE CAPACITIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Rethinking the concept and the measurement of bureaucratic capacity

concepts can be seen as variants on the ‘necessary and sufficient condition’ structure or the ‘family resemblance’ one. In the case of the BQI, a family resemblance structure was used to conceptualize bureaucratic quality. A good way to think about the family resemblance structure is as a rule of sufficiency without necessary condition requirements. By definition, a necessary condition cannot be substituted for. The family resemblance approach, in contrast, allows for the absence of a given characteristic to be compensated by the presence of another (Goertz, 2006).

Figure 1. Family resemblance structure of bureaucratic quality based on an ontological concept of high bureaucratic capacity.

Using a family resemblance structure, the BQI is broken down into four major dimensions, seeking to show differences between agencies and policies. These dimensions are (i) admission and recruitment, (ii) qualification and education, (iii) internal promotion, and (iv) accountability.

Having defined the formal, structural relationship between the levels of the concept, it is necessary to define the theoretical relationship between these same levels. In the case of the BQI, it is assumed that there is no causal relationship between the secondary and the basic level (the ontological approach in Goertz’s terms).

The dimensions defined as the secondary level constitute what the phenom-enon is, so that the relationship is one of identity, not causation (Goertz, 2006).

Meritocratic recruitment and rewarding long-term careers, for instance, are not indicators of a high-quality bureaucracy. Rather, they are what it means to

con-Rethinking the concept and the measurement of bureaucratic capacity

stitute a good bureaucracy. Therefore, the high-quality bureaucracy concept is understood here as a combination of an ontological approach to concepts with a family resemblance structure.

After defining the relationship between the basic and the secondary levels, the conceptualization of bureaucratic quality should move to the indicator/data level.

According to Goertz (2006: 62), ‘in a three-level concept structure the indicator level links the more theoretical analysis in the basic and secondary levels to the more practical requirements of converting these ideas into empirical practice’.

Following Goertz’s framework, a substitubility relationship at the indicator and the secondary levels was also used, as shown in Figure 1.

To calculate the BQI, used as a proxy for the quality of the bureaucracies responsible for implementing development policies, the secondary level, composed of four dimensions, was subdivided into six indicators. Two dimensions – recruit-ment and qualification – were subdivided into two indicators each, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Secondary and indicator levels of bureaucratic quality

Dimension Indicator Calculation

Recruitment IR1 Proportion of civil servants with

temporary contract Number of civil servants with temporary contracts ÷ total number of civil servants in the agency hired through entrance exams

IR2 Proportion of civil servants requisitioned from other agencies

Number of civil servants requisitioned from other agencies ÷total number of civil servants in the agency hired through entrance exams

Qualification IF1 Proportion of civil servants with a generalist qualification (EPPGGs)

Number of generalists ÷ total civil servants with college degrees

IF2 Proportion of expert civil

servants Number of experts ÷ total of civil servants with college degrees Internal

promotion* IP1 Occupation of political appointments by career civil servants

Number of career civil servants appointed to selected political appointed positions ÷ 50% of the total number of the selected positions available for appointment

Accountability IA1 Proportion of civil servants dismissed after administrative processes

Number of civil servants dismissed

÷total number of civil servants in the agency

Note: Only civil servants who participate directly in the design and implementation of policies were included.

STATE CAPACITIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGING COUNTRIES Rethinking the concept and the measurement of bureaucratic capacity

The reason the BQI highlights the importance of generalist public managers is the complexity that characterizes the tasks under the responsibility of governments today, requiring a more comprehensive knowledge of public issues. Generalists have become of major importance in the structure of the Brazilian federal government, leading to the hypothesis that the higher the number of generalists, the greater the bureaucratic capacity of the agency. On the other hand, an indicator for calculating the participation of experts in the agency was included, because of the particularities of development policies. These two dimensions – experts and generalists – measure the complexity of the tasks handled by the federal government.

When grouping agencies according to policies, indicators IR1, IR2, IF1, IF2 and IA1 assumed values ranging between 0 and 1. With indicators where values close to unity signaled a lower-quality bureaucracy, as in the proportion of civil servants hired on temporary contracts or proportion of civil servants requisitioned from other agencies and those dismissed for wrongdoing, the difference between the unity and the observed value was used for each indicator. The indicator ‘occupation of politically-appointed positions by career bureaucrats’ was converted into an index with values from 0 to 1. This was done using as a parameter a maximum value of 1.8 and a minimum value of 0.3, meaning that the closer the indicator was to 1.8 the higher the bureaucratic quality. The following formula was used for the index transformation:

IP1´ = IP1obs – 0.3 1.8 – 0.3

The indicators, transformed into indexes ranging from 0 to 1, were grouped according to the four policy areas. The BQI was calculated as follows:

IQB = (1–IR1) × p₁ + (1–IR2) × p₂ + IF1 × p₃ + IF2 × p₄+ IP1´ × p₅ + (1–IA1) × p₆ . where p₁, p₂, p₃, p₄, p₅ and p₆ refer to the weights of the respective indicators.

2. BUREAUCRATIC QUALITY INDEX – DATA AND SAMPLE