Santiago Quintero

Peer-reviewed articles

“Short-term Patronage: Job Uncertainty and Temporary Employment in Politicized Bureaucracies“, Public Performance & Management Review

In this paper, I study the effect of the political assignment of temporary public jobs—referred to here as short-term patronage—on the strategic behavior of temporary employees in developing public administrations. I examine the interplay between job uncertainty and political patronage as determinants of temporary employees’ work effort, operationalized as time allocation to a project. The central argument is that temporary employees strategically adjust their time allocation to mitigate future job uncertainty, and patronage can incentivize increased or reduced effort contingent upon such uncertainty. Using a novel vignette experiment with Colombian public employees, I find that lower job uncertainty can lead to an increase in job effort by temporary employees. Furthermore, when future job uncertainty is lower (higher), patronage can increase (decrease) temporary employees’ time dedication to their tasks. These findings underscore the complex and often unintended consequences of the interaction between employment flexibilization reforms and the political dynamics of public administration, particularly in the context of weakly professionalized bureaucracies.

Working papers

“Rules Across Boundaries: A framework to link Decentralization and Cross-Boundary Collaboration Rulemaking in Latin America” – Revise and Resubmit
(with José Sánchez and Alejandra Medina)
[Working Paper available upon request]

Cross-boundary collaboration to produce public services or govern policy problems can emerge as contingent dynamics initiated by local governments or driven by incentives and mandates from higher-level governments. This research focuses on understanding collaboration regimes in the Global South, a region where decentralization processes have left a centralist legacy of underfunded local governments with minimal autonomy. We synthesize elements from the Collaborative Governance Regime and Institutional Grammar tool as research lenses to propose a cross-boundary collaboration framework for the Global South to understand how national-level system contexts and decentralization processes shape the institutional arrangements that regulate cross-boundary interactions. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, we apply the framework across three Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. This initial application suggests that different paths of decentralization not only set the devolution of capacity and autonomy to local governments, but also determine the level and type of rules under which cross-boundary collaboration emerges.

“The Bureaucratic Politics of Networks: How Patronage Shapes Intergovernmental Collaboration” – Under Review
[Working Paper]

How does patronage—the political appointment of bureaucrats—affect the coordination and joint delivery of policies? Research has examined patronage’s effects on bureaucratic performance, but mostly within hierarchical, top-down policymaking. However, in many domains, governance depends on horizontal networks of intergovernmental collaboration. I argue that patronage’s effect on collaboration depends on the fit between the resources appointees carry and the demands of the positions they fill. Patronage facilitates coordination when appointees’ political capital can be deployed for brokerage and negotiation but undermines it when loyalty-driven hiring displaces technical expertise and organizational stability. To test this argument, I analyze the network of environmental collaboration agreements among Colombian public agencies using hierarchical Exponential Random Graph Models. The evidence shows that managerial patronage fosters collaboration, especially along co-partisan lines, while professional-level patronage inhibits it. These findings underscore patronage’s contingent role in governance networks and the importance of bureaucratic politics for collaborative policy delivery.

“The Bureaucratic Politics of Polycentric Governance: Bringing the Bureaucracy Back In” – Under Review
[Working Paper]

Bureaucratic autonomy is one of the most important institutional determinants of government performance, yet its effects have been studied almost entirely within hierarchical settings. This paper extends the comparative bureaucratic politics literature to polycentric systems, a form of governance that depends on the coordination of multiple autonomous decision-making centres, and that characterises much of contemporary governance. Public bureaucracies function as primary nodes in most polycentric systems, and the political arrangements that govern their recruitment, tenure, and organisational independence reshape the conditions under which polycentric coordination can succeed or fail. I propose three analytical dimensions through which bureaucratic autonomy shapes polycentric systems: capacity, intertemporal dynamics, and political capital. Because no single configuration of autonomy optimises all three dimensions simultaneously, the framework argues that the level of autonomy best suited to polycentric coordination shifts as the governance system develops. The paper proposes mechanisms to respecify enabling conditions and dysfunction syndromes identified in polycentric theory in terms of their upstream political-administrative determinants, and proposes a research agenda that bridges polycentric governance with comparative bureaucratic politics and public administration reform.

“Bureaucratic Politicisation Conditions Decentralisation Effects on Ecosystems and Climate: Evidence from 91 Countries“
[Working Paper available upon request]

Environmental governance worldwide increasingly operates through multi-level, decentralised institutional architectures. Yet the environmental outcomes of these arrangements vary enormously, and we still know relatively little about the macro-institutional conditions under which the coordination mechanisms that polycentric and multi-level systems rely upon can actually flourish. I argue that a foundational but overlooked conditioning factor is the politicisation of bureaucratic appointments—the extent to which politicians control the recruitment of public servants. Using a panel of 91 countries over the period 2005–2022, I examine how the interaction between decentralisation and bureaucratic politicisation shapes four environmental outcomes: overall environmental performance, ecosystem vitality, environmental health, and climate change mitigation. Results from within-between random-effects models, complemented by hierarchical GMM estimators, show that whilst decentralisation is associated with short-run declines in environmental quality, countries with structurally more decentralised systems perform better in the long run. Bureaucratic politicisation amplifies the short-term environmental costs of decentralisation, but its moderating role varies by environmental domain: climate mitigation—where coordination demands are highest and political credit-claiming is most difficult—is the most severely affected, whilst environmental health—comprising locally tangible goods such as drinking water and sanitation—is the least vulnerable.

Work in progress

“How Bureaucratic Autonomy Reduces Vulnerability to Deforestation in the Tropics“

“The Nonlinear Effects of Polycentric Coordination on Drinking Water Quality“

“Information Provision and Preferences for Flood Risk Management Policies: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment” (with Francesca Vantaggiato and James Porter)

“Estimating Heterogeneity in Political Networks: A Random Effects Approach for Exponential Random Graph Models“

“When AI Talks Politics: Does ChatGPT Influence Voters’ Pro-climate Preferences?” (with Lina Kramer and Laura Montecchio)

Book chapters

“Advancing municipalisation in Colombia toward new forms of territorial association” (with Santiago Leyva and Pablo Zapata). In Territorial association, multi-level governance and decentralisation, Edited by Sanabira-Pulido, P., Rodriguez-Caporalli, E., Leyva, S., Icesi University: Cali, 2025 – In Spanish

“Metropolitan Governments: A Historical and Theoretical Approach” (with Santiago Leyva and Laura Gallego). In Citizen Security form a Metropolitan Governance Perspective, Edited by Gallego, L., Leyva, S. & Mesa, J., EAFIT University: Medellin, 2018 – In Spanish

“Citizen Security Policies in the Valle de Aburr´a. Coordination Problems for the Implementation of Government Tools” (with Juan Mesa, Andrea Arango and Luis Arbeláez). In Citizen Security form a Metropolitan Governance Perspective, Edited by Gallego, L., Leyva, S. & Mesa, J., EAFIT University: Medellin, 2018 – In Spanish