7 - The Autonomous Bureaucracy and Incremental Change

Summary

Because of the economic power of incumbent firms and the political power of multiple veto players, changes to the developmental state were usually incremental.This contributed to the protagonism of the civil service as a change agent. Drawing on three case studies, the chapter illustrates how epistemic communities within the bureaucracy guided a variety of innovations across unconnected policy arenas: fiscal, health, and anti-corruption. Although policy innovation by the bureaucracy was incremental, slow, and often restricted to particular “islands of excellence” within the archipelago of state agencies, it was nonetheless essential to the most important accomplishments of the past generation. Civil service incrementalism, however, may have made change away from the overarching systemic equilibrium of the developmental state less likely, by exacerbating the fiscal quandary, sustaining the coalitional presidential system, and suppressing demands for more radical reform.