The Practice and Politics of Secretary General Appointments

The 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.