Abstract
We argue that several easily identifiable structural features constitute the key ingredients of effective state bureaucracies and should help to predict ratings of bureaucratic performance: competitive salaries, internal promotion and career stability, and meritocratic recruitment. We collect a new dataset on these features for bureaucracies of 35 less developed countries. Controlling for country income, level of education, and ethnolinguistic diversity, we find that our measure of meritocratic recruitment is a statistically significant determinant of ratings supplied by two of three country risk agencies. The importance of competitive salaries and internal promotion and career stability could not be clearly established.
