Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of "Weberian" State
Structures on Economic Growth
Author(s): Peter Evans and James E. Rauch
Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 64, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 748-765
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657374
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BUREAUCRACY AND GROWTH:
A CROSS-NATIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF
"WEBERIAN" STATE STRUCTURES ON ECONOMIC GROWTH*
Peter Evans James E. Rauch
University of California, Berkeley University of California, San Diego
The role of bureaucratic authority structures in facilitating economic growth
has been a sociological concern since Max Weber's classic contributions almost
100 years ago. Using a recent and original data set, we examine the
characteristics of core state economic agencies and the growth records of a
sample of 35 developing countries for the 1970-1990 period. Our
"Weberianness Scale" offers a simple measure of the degree to which these
agencies employ meritocratic recruitment and offer predictable, rewarding
long-term careers. We find that these "Weberian " characteristics significantly
enhance prospects for economic growth, even when we control for
initial levels of GDP per capita and human capital. Our results imply that
"Weberianness" should be included as a factor in general models of economic
growth. They also suggest the need for more attention by policymakers
to building better bureaucracies and more research by social scientists on
variations in how state bureaucracies are organized.
xplaining economic transformation at
Li the national level is a classic sociological
preoccupation as well as a central
concern of economic analysis. There are
many ways to approach this task, but one of
the most challenging involves trying to analyze
the role that public institutions play in
fostering (or impeding) economic growth.
* Direct all correspondence to Peter Evans, Department
of Sociology, 410 Barrows Hall, University
of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
(pevans @ socrates berkeley .edu). These results
grow out of the project on Bureaucratic Structure
and Economic Performance directed by Peter
Evans and James Rauch. The project was funded
in various stages by the Russell Sage Foundation,
the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal
Sector, and Policy Research Department of
the World Bank. We thank the 126 country experts
for their generosity in sharing their knowledge
and professional expertise. The findings reported
here were produced by Linus Huang and
John Talbot, working under the direction of Peter
Evans and James Rauch. Patrick Heller and Mark
Ritchie provided invaluable assistance in early
stages of the data analysis. For comments on
early drafts we thank Ken Bollen, Neil Fligstein,
Trond Petersen, and Erik Olin Wright. Christy
Getz played an invaluable role in the revision of
the manuscript. We also thank two anonymous reviewers
and the ASR Editor for their comments.
Growth depends on governance. Deciphering
the relation between administrative structures
and changing levels of economic output
is, therefore, a perennial preoccupation
of theorists and practitioners alike. In 1997,
the World Bank took up the task again in a
World Development Report called "The State
in a Changing World." Both the choice of
topic and the content of the report itself signified
an important shift in thinking about
the role of the state within the "development
establishment." Explaining why some state
bureaucracies are more effective than others
seems at last to be taking precedence over
simply condemning excesses of state intervention.
Pursuing this agenda requires re-exploring
classic arguments on the comparative
effectiveness of different forms of administrative
organization. It is an obvious opportunity
for sociological analysis to make a
contribution to the understanding of crossnational
differences in rates of economic
growth.
Among the classic arguments that need to
be brought together with some systematic
comparative evidence, Weber's analysis of
bureaucracy is perhaps the most obvious candidate.
At the beginning of the century,
Weber's ([1904-1911] 1968) monumental
748 American Sociological Review, 1999, Vol. 64 (October:748-765)
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 749
essays, Economy and Society, argued for the
fundamental value of bureaucracy as one of
the institutional foundations of capitalist
growth. Subsequent comparative historical
analysis (e.g., Polanyi [1944] 1957) echoed
Weber's assertions, but the "bureaucracy as
a tool of growth" thesis always had to contend
with the historically prior and ideologically
powerful "Smithian" view that government,
regardless of its organizational form,
was the enemy of growth as soon as it went
beyond protecting property rights.1
In the 1970s and 1980s, neo-classical political
economy and rational choice analysis
provided new analytical reinforcement for
the Smithian perspective (cf. Buchanan,
Tollison, and Tullock 1980; Colclough and
Manor 1991; Collander 1984; Krueger
1974). Case studies of "rent-seeking" and
"predatory" states complemented these analytical
arguments with equally powerful empirical
support (e.g., Bates 1981; Klitgaard
1988). Unfortunately, in the rush to avoid the
dangers of state intervention, the question of
what kinds of state structures are most likely
to promote economic growth was easily lost.
By the 1990s, however, economists (but
surprisingly not sociologists) began to focus
on cross-national data that demonstrated the
importance of looking more closely at how
states were organized. Their results showed
various measures of "quality of government"
to be powerfully connected to economic
growth (Knack and Keefer 1995; Mauro
1995). This rapidly growing literature suggests
that earlier neo-classical visions of
government performance were too simplistic.
Nonetheless, perhaps because of the absence
of sociologists from the discussion, a
way of describing what "good government"
would look like was still lacking.
Contemporary empirical analyses of rentseeking
and corruption often use the term
"bureaucracy" in its everyday pejorative
sense rather than in the Weberian sense of a
set of administrative organizations with specific
structural features. Weber viewed bureaucracy,
not as a generic collection of state
officials, but as a particular kind of organizational
structure, set in contrast to earlier
patrimonial and prebendal forms of government
administration.
The Weberian perspective does not negate
the positive effects of strengthening market
institutions, but it does postulate that bureaucratically
structured public organizations, using
their own distinct set of decision-making
procedures, are a necessary complement to
market-based institutional arrangements.2
More precisely, Weber argued that public administrative
organizations characterized by
meritocratic recruitment and predictable,
long-term career rewards will be more effective
at facilitating capitalist growth than
other forms of state organization. This hypothesis
cannot be dismissed simply by the
discovery that people who call themselves
bureaucrats have engaged in rent-seeking or
that corrupt governments have undermined
economic growth. Addressing the "Weberian
state hypothesis" means answering the question,
"Are countries whose administrative
apparatuses more closely approximate bureaucratic
forms of organization characterized
by higher rates of economic growth?"
For some reason, students of economic development
have lacked the incentive required
to generate a systematic empirical response
to this apparently simple question. Our research
reported here represents an initial effort
to fill the lacuna.
Using an original data set, we examine the
effect on economic growth of certain structural
features that were key elements in
Weber's original characterization of bureaucracy.
Our "Weberianness Scale" offers a
simple measure of the degree to which core
state agencies are characterized by
meritocratic recruitment and offer predictable,
rewarding long-term careers.
1 By "Smithian" we mean the standard "laissezfaire"
view of government's role that is usually
attributed to Adam Smith. Smith's own view was
actually more sophisticated, including, for example,
an appreciation of the importance of public
provision of a range of collective goods.
2 The spirit of the Weberian perspective is at
least partially recaptured in Williamson's (1985)
"new institutionalist" assertions that complex
production systems are likely to require mixing
(essentially nonmarket) governance structures
with more traditional market transactions. But
application of the Williamsonian perspective has
generally been limited to analyses of relations
among private firms and is rarely invoked in studies
of state bureaucracies.
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750 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
RECENT LITERATURE
The literature on the role that state bureaucracies
play in promoting or impeding economic
growth ranges from detailed case studies
of particular agencies in particular countries
to cross-national analyses using statistical
proxies drawn from many countries. Traditionally,
political scientists have dominated
the production of case studies (e.g., Stepan
1978; Waterbury 1983) while sociologists
have focused more on cross-national analyses
(e.g., Delacroix and Ragin 1981;
Rubinson 1977; Snyder and Kick 1979). In
recent years, awakened interest among economists
in cross-national analysis has substantially
expanded the production of cross-national
statistical studies. The principal stimulus
to renewed interest among economists has
been the emergence of "endogenous growth
theory," which offers formal theoretical support
for the proposition that institutional factors
could have a fundamental effect on rates
of growth (cf. Lucas 1988; also see, e.g.,
Romer 1986, 1990, 1994).
The endogenous growth perspective legitimated
a variegated set of cross-national
analyses by economists examining the impact
of a variety of noneconomic variables on national
growth rates (see Crowley et al. 1998).
In one of the earliest and most influential of
these studies, Barro (1991) emphasized the
negative role of government by stressing the
negative impact of government consumption
(as a share of GDP) on growth rates.
What both the earlier sociology literature
and the recent cross-national economics literature
lacked was the possibility of seriously
addressing the question of how variations
in the form of state organization might
affect economic dynamism. Arguments in the
early sociological literature were formulated
in terms of the dubious concept of "state
strength," with state revenues and expenditures
offered as proxies for "state strength"
(e.g., Rubinson 1977). The cross-national regressions
of the new endogenous growth
models included even more unsatisfying
proxies, such as using the annualized number
of assassinations or revolutions as a
proxy for political stability ( Barro 1991).
Neither economists nor (oddly enough) sociologists
had focused their cross-national
analyses on organizational differences.
Nonetheless, a literature developed that paid
serious attention to bureaucratic structures
and was directly relevant to the Weberian hypothesis.
This literature was built around detailed
case studies of individual countries
and focused primarily on a single region.
Johnson's (1982) classic study of Japan's
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
(MITI) during the golden years of Japanese
industrialization led the way. Johnson's portrayal
was surprisingly consistent with a
Weberian perspective. Subsequent studies of
Korea (Amsden 1989) and Taiwan (Wade
1990) reinforced the picture.3 Because the
"East Asian Tigers" described in these studies
were also the most economically successful
nations in the world during the 1970s and
1980s, they created a strong prima facie case
in favor of the Weberian hypothesis. By the
beginning of the 1990s, even the World Bank
(1993) seemed to join in the chorus with its
East Asian Miracle report that emphasized
the positive role played by East Asian bureaucracies
in the region's spectacular industrialization
(also see Campos and Root 1996;
Cheng, Haggard, and Kang 1995; Koh 1995;
Quah 1993). Nonetheless, the argument continued
to rest primarily on case studies. The
question remained as to whether the
Weberian state hypothesis could be substantiated
with a broader set of systematic evi-
dence.
In the 1990s the case-study literature was
complemented by efforts to connect variations
in the character of state bureaucracies
to economic performance by means of quantitative
cross-national analysis. Economists,
rather than sociologists, took the lead in developing
a more organizational focus. A new
set of studies utilized the commercially
available assessments of variations across
national governments that businessmen had
been using for some time.4 The methodologi-
3 Simultaneously, a complementary body of literature
began to focus on the weakness of public
institutions as a key barrier to growth in sub-Saharan
Africa (cf. Bates 1989; Callaghy 1989;
Easterly and Levine 1997; World Bank 1994,
1997).
4 International Country Risk Guide (ICRG),
Business and Environmental Risk Intelligence
(BERI), and Business International (BI) are
among the most prominent examples of such as-
sessments.
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 751
cal validity and reliability of these measures
were open to question. The rating services
that provided them offered little explanation
of how their data were derived or why they
should be considered reliable. The data
seemed to be based primarily on the assessments
of consultants, but the basis on which
these consultants were selected was not usually
specified, and methodological issues
were clearly not a primary concern.5 The validity
of these ratings as independent determinants
of economic growth was also somewhat
suspect. Most of the components of the
ratings had clear "good" and "bad" polesmore
or less corruption, more or less red
tape, higher or lower "quality" of the bureaucracy,
and so on. Because raters were aware
of the economic performance of the countries
they were rating, a tendency to give "good"
ratings to high-performing countries and
"bad" ratings to low-performing ones was
likely to "build in" a correlation between the
ratings and economic growth.
Despite their flaws, these ratings did provide
a way to compare bureaucracies across
a wide set of countries, and they did seem to
produce results that confirmed the importance
of variations across national bureaucracies
in explaining variations in economic
growth. Mauro (1995), using ratings on "corruption"
and "red tape" from Business International,
found that variation in these ratings
was significantly associated with increased
levels of investment, which were in turn one
of the most obvious and powerful predictors
of economic growth. Knack and Keefer
(1995) used International Country Risk
Guide (ICRG) ratings and Business and Environmental
Risk Intelligence (BERI) ratings,
and they too discovered that these ratings
were directly related to variations in the
growth of per capita income.6
Use of data on variations in state bureaucracies
gives recent studies a clear advantage
over earlier work that had to rely on gross
measures, like aggregate government expenditures,
or distant proxies, like number of assassinations.
The fact that recent studies consistently
find relationships between bureaucratic
performance and economic growth
provides new incentive for trying to refine
our understanding of the roots of "bureaucratic
performance." Nevertheless, even this
new generation of studies remains prisoner
to the available measures. Convincing efforts
to adjudicate the empirical validity of the
Weberian state hypothesis must begin with
information on how the structure of state bureaucracies
varies across countries, which is
what we have tried to do in our study.
CONNECTING BUREAUCRATIC
STRUCTURES AND GROWTH
Contemporary analysis of comparative bureaucratic
structures needs to move beyond
Weber, but Weber's characterizations do provide
a simple, accessible starting point for
comparative research. In contrasting bureaucracies
with prior organizational forms, Weber
stressed a number of points that lend
themselves to relatively objective empirical
assessment. We emphasize two of these. The
first is the importance of meritocratic recruitment,
which ideally is based on some combination
of education and examination (Gerth
and Mills 1958:241; Parsons 1964:333, 339).
The second is a predictable career ladder,
which provides long-term tangible and intangible
rewards for those recruited into the bureaucracy
(Gerth and Mills 1958:200-203;
Parsons 1964:334-35; Stinchcombe 1974).
We could have selected other Weberian organizational
features.7 One advantage of
5 From the point of view of investors looking
for the best current assessment of prospective future
returns in a given locale, the invaluable feature
of the data provided by these rating services
is their timeliness. ICRG, for example, provides
monthly ratings for 130 countries around the
world on a variety of political and economic indicators.
No purely academic study could ever
come close to offering such immediate informa-
tion.
6 La Porta et al. (1999) offer an excellent discussion
of the quality of government institutions,
but they focus on the determinants of quality and
performance rather than on their effects on economic
growth.
7 Because the particular characteristics we have
chosen to focus on are only a partial set of those
described by Weber, stressing other features of
Weberian bureaucracy might produce different
results. For example, rule-governed decisionmaking,
which is clearly a feature of the bureaucratic
model, might be a double-edged sword, enhancing
predictability and efficiency up to a certain
point but producing rigidity and organizaThis
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752 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
meritocratic recruitment and rewarding/predictable
career ladders is that these features
are relatively easy to translate into simple
measures that can be evaluated across countries,
hence focusing on them facilitates empirical
testing. Also, plausible theoretical
connections can be constructed between
these features and improved organizational
ability to deliver the collective goods that
constitute the state's potential contribution to
economic growth.
Meritocratic recruitment not only increases
the likelihood of at least minimal competence
but also helps generate corporate coherence
and esprit de corps, which in turn
can be argued to have substantive effects on
the motivation of individual officeholders.
Bureaucrats who see themselves as having
joined their confreres in office by virtue of
sharing similar abilities are more likely to
internalize shared norms and goals than are
those who know they owe their office to the
favor of a particular kinsman or patron. Identification
with colleagues and the organization
itself should also create internalized intangible
costs for corrupt activities that subvert
organizational goals and increase the effectiveness
of monitoring.
Offering rewarding long-term careers
might also increase competence in the long
run, but, regardless of their effects on competence,
such careers will increase corporate
coherence. Likewise, the predictable prospect
of long-term career rewards reduces the
relative attractiveness of the quick returns
available from corrupt individual practices.
This is obvious insofar as one of the aspects
of long-term career rewards is competitive
salaries. It is equally clear that careers that
provide the expectation of a series of promotions
related to performance and conformity
to organizational norms create disincentives
to corrupt behavior, especially if such behavior
undermines organizational goals. The
costs of breaking organizational norms are
also directly proportional to the expected
longevity of membership in the organization
and the expected rewards to longevity.8
Overall, meritocratic recruitment and predictable
career ladders should help structure
the incentives of individual bureaucrats in a
way that enhances the ability of the organizations
they manage to effectively pursue
long-term goals.9
If the argument that these structural features
contribute to a more competent, purposive,
and cohesive bureaucracy is accepted,
myriad specific causal paths leading to higher
rates of economic growth are plausible.
The longer time horizons associated with
predictable, rewarding careers will increase
the bureaucracy's propensity to advocate
public-sector infrastructure investment rather
than consumptive expenditures. Because the
returns from public infrastructure investments
depend essentially on their "systemness,"
the coherence of the bureaucracy
should enhance their effectiveness. Likewise,
the reduction in individual maximizing (i.e.,
corrupt) practices should reduce the implicit
tax on the private sector that such practices
represent.
Diffuse links may be equally or more important.
Most of the case study literature on
"developmental states" focuses primarily on
the role state bureaucracies play in eliciting
higher rates of private investment (e.g.,
Amsden 1989; Evans 1995; Johnson 1982;
Wade 1991; World Bank 1993). Obviously,
rational, risk-averse entrepreneurs will avoid
making long-term investments in plant and
equipment if they face a corrupt, unpredictable
bureaucracy unlikely to provide complementary
public investments. By the same totional
sclerosis when carried further. The same
argument could be applied to the idea that each
office in the state apparatus should have strictly
defined, nonoverlapping jurisdictions.
8 Stinchcombe (1974:134-35, 147-48) focuses
on industrial rather than administrative bureaucracies
but provides a very relevant analysis of
the role of careers in shaping individual motiva-
tions.
9 Meritocratic recruitment and career ladders
are not the only structural characteristics that can
be postulated to enhance the organizational performance
of state bureaucracies. In Embedded
Autonomy, Evans (1995) argues that the full potential
contribution of state bureaucracies to capital
accumulation is likely to be realized only
when the corporate coherence provided by
Weberian characteristics is combined with a
dense systematic set of ties to the entrepreneurial
class. In a different vein, theorists of the "New
Public Management" would highlight "market
mimicking" mechanisms such as "pay for performance"
(see Barzelay 1997; Hood and Jackson
1991; Milgrom and Roberts 1992; Olsen and Peters
1996).
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 753
ken, shared perceptions of the state bureaucracy
as dependable, predictable, minimally
competent and committed to long-term
growth makes investment appear less risky.
Competent bureaucracies can help individual
entrepreneurs overcome coordination
problems that may be crucial in instigating
new activities. They can also turn informational
resources into public goods in ways
that increase the likelihood and effectiveness
of investment (e.g., see Rodrik 1995). For
example, when entrepreneurs in small countries
are trying to upgrade into world markets,
collective action to gather data on external
markets and enforce standards among
local producers may confer important advantages.
Respected bureaucracies could act as
"honest brokers" in overcoming collective
action problems among exporters. A stronger
version of this argument would see the bureaucracy
itself as gathering information and
providing advice and incentives that help local
firms to better thread their way through
the labyrinth of rapidly changing world markets.
10
Adjudicating among the various paths that
might account for a connection between
competent, coherent state bureaucracies and
economic growth would be a challenging and
worthwhile task, but it is not our aim here.
We aim to establish a basic connection between
bureaucratic structures and economic
growth, thereby providing additional incentive
to explore alternative mechanisms that
might account for the connection. 1
To reiterate, we assess the effect of a particular
set of bureaucratic structures; we do
not attempt a comprehensive appraisal of all
the features of bureaucratic structure that
might enhance economic performance. We
selected meritocratic recruitment and career
ladders because of the strong claims in the
literature on their behalf and because they
constitute an empirically identifiable, theoretically
plausible set of structural characteristics
that offers a good starting point for
demonstrating the value of doing new research
on the economic consequences of
variations in bureaucratic structures.
Our strategy for connecting bureaucratic
structures and economic growth obviously
differs from Weber's. Weber was interested
in long-term historical changes in organizational
forms. We are interested in cross-sectional
comparisons in the contemporary period.
Our empirical proposition is a simple
one. We predict that countries whose bureaucratic
structures incorporated Weberian features
will have experienced more rapid economic
growth over the 20 years between
1970 and 1990 than did those countries in
which such features were less fully incorpo-
rated.
DATA
The absence of comparable measures of bureaucratic
structure for a substantial set of
countries is one of the principal impediments
to assessing the effects of variation in bureaucracy
on economic growth. We decided
that only by collecting new, original data
could we surmount this obstacle. The "Weberian
state data set" 12 we have collected is
built on comparable expert evaluations of
bureaucratic structures in 35 countries, laboriously
gathered over a period of almost
three years (1993-1996).
Our sample began with the 30 "semi-industrialized"
countries identified by Chenery
(1980) and was complemented by 5 poorer
10 According to Keesing (1988), this is essentially
the role played by trade promotion bureaucracies
in the four Asian tigers. Also see Rodrik
(1995).
", There is, of course, another set of arguments
in the literature that postulates a more central role
for state bureaucracies in shaping national trajectories
of investment and growth. Such arguments
involve both the ability of governments to push
entrepreneurs into investing larger shares of their
profits by "disciplining" them (cf. Amsden 1989),
and the ability of public agencies to stimulate
more risky but ultimately rewarding forms of investment
through selective subsidies and protection
from external competition (cf. Amsden 1989;
Ernst and O'Connor 1992; Evans 1995; Wade
1990). While these arguments are plausible, they
clearly require more than minimal competence on
the part of the bureaucracy. Insofar as these arguments
apply, the case for the importance of bureaucratic
structures becomes much more important,
but the theoretical plausibility of the
Weberian hypothesis does not depend on these
stronger arguments regarding the role of public
institutions in making growth possible.
12 The discussion of the Weberian data set is
drawn largely from Talbot (1997).
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754 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
countries. Our reasons for starting with the
Chenery sample were threefold. To begin
with, we estimated that our available resources
would not allow us to collect data on
more than about 35 countries, so the
Chenery sample was the right size. Second,
we were interested in understanding variations
in growth among developing countries
rather than between developing and advanced
industrial countries. We wanted to include
countries that were still confronting
the issue of industrial transformation during
the period under consideration. The Chenery
sample provided a good range of developing
countries. Third, we wanted a good range of
variation on "Weberianness." Although there
were no systematic data available on Weberianness
per se, we knew that variation in
"bureaucratic performance" variables was
much greater among developing countries
than among industrialized countries. This
latter consideration was also a motive for including
some additional countries too poor
to be included in the Chenery sample. Data
on bureaucratic performance made it clear
that excluding poorer countries would undersample
the low end of the distribution on bureaucratic
performance and therefore might
also undersample the low ranges of Weberianness
(see Rauch and Evans 1999:8-9,
figs. lb, ic). Selection of the poor countries
to be added was driven by a desire for increased
representation of the Caribbean,
South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, and by
our belief that there was a sufficient corps of
experts on the bureaucracies of these countries
to allow us to find at least three experts
for each of them.13 The resulting sample of
35 countries represents all the major regions
of the developing world as well as the southern
European fringe of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). It also offers a range of growth performance
over the 1970s and 1980s from
Korea and Singapore (growing consistently
at over 6 percent per capita per year) to Zaire
(shrinking more than 2 percent). At the same
time, our sample of countries offers a good
range in terms of "bureaucratic performance"
as measured by commercial rating
services (see Rauch and Evans 1999:8-9,
figs. ib, ic).
Obtaining measures of different features
of bureaucratic structure in each of these
countries required the cooperation of a large
number of experts, each of whom had specific
knowledge of the state bureaucracy of
a particular country. Collecting responses
was labor intensive, but the level of collaboration
was both surprising and gratifying.
We were ultimately able to gather responses
from a total of 126 experts, a minimum of 3
experts for 32 of our 35 countries, and 2 experts
for the remaining 3 countries (Morocco,
Thailand, and Uruguay). The experts
were drawn from a combination of scholars
known for their research on the bureaucracies
of each country, local officials with
reputations for having a broad perspective
on their country's administrative structures,
and professionals working on these issues in
multilateral organizations. Together the experts
in our sample account for a substantial
portion of the published literature on the
state bureaucracies for the countries in our
sample. 14
The experts' evaluations were structured
by means of a fixed-response questionnaire.15
In answering the fixed-response
questions, the experts were asked first to
identify the central state agencies that played
the most important role in formulating economic
policy, and then to answer questions
regarding them. 16 We reasoned that the structure
of the core economic agencies probably
had an effect on economic growth, and because
country case studies have shown that
there is usually substantial variation across
agencies, getting a measure that focused on
the most relevant agencies made sense.
Questions concerning the state bureaucracy
13 The five countries added to Chenery's
sample were Haiti, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka,
and Zaire. For other analyses of Chenery's initial
sample see Feder (1983) and Esfahani (1991).
14 For a more detailed discussion of the distribution
of different types of experts across countries
see Talbot (1997, table 2).
15 All experts were encouraged to provide additional
commentary and complementary materials,
and most did so. This additional material was
reviewed during the coding of the fixed-response
questions, but is not analyzed separately here.
16 Specifically, experts were asked to "list the
four most important agencies in the central state
bureaucracy in order of their power to shape overall
economic policy."
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 755
generally followed those focused on the core
economic agencies.17
Country experts were not asked to evaluate
the performance or quality of the bureaucracy.
Instead, the questionnaire focused on
specific descriptive features of the bureaucracy
that are subject to objective estimation.
We then combined these descriptive features
to construct a simple measure that reflected
a Weberian bureaucratic structure built on
meritocratic recruitment and rewarding predictable
career ladders.
Because bureaucratic structures are notoriously
resistant to change, we felt secure in
assuming that the differences we discovered
among bureaucratic structures would characterize
the situation in place at the beginning
of the period (and, indeed, had probably been
in place for some time prior to 1970) and
were, therefore, temporally antecedent to
growth during the 1970-1990 period. To
check on this assumption, experts were asked
not only to provide responses that characterized
the entire period but also to note any
significant changes during the period. Despite
some references to deterioration in the
situation of bureaucrats over time (particularly
in relation to relative salaries), it was
clear from their comments that the bureaucratic
structures they described antedated
1970-1990 economic growth.'8
Ten questions were used to create what we
call the "Weberianness Scale." (See Appendix
A for a discussion of the scale and a list
of items.) An initial question indicated the
importance of the agencies under consideration
in generating economic policy. Two of
the subsequent questions (questions 2 and 9
in Appendix A) measured the importance of
exams in recruiting civil servants to the core
economic agencies and more generally.19
Three of the questions tapped issues relating
to careers: whether civil servants, once recruited,
are likely to stay in the civil service
(questions 3 and 5) and whether staying in
the civil service implies possibilities for
moving up within a hierarchy (question 4).
An additional four questions tapped the issue
of career rewards, both in terms of salaries
and prestige (questions 6, 7, 8, and 10).
The resulting Weberianness Scale provides a
succinct, substantively plausible measure of
the bureaucratic features that are the focus of
our investigation.
To discover what relationship, if any, might
exist between these features and economic
growth during the 1970-1990 period, we
drew on measures from available standard
data sets to create our dependent variable,
growth in GDP per capita from 1970-1990,
and our control variables, initial income level
and pre-existing human capital. (See Appendix
B for definitions and data sources for the
dependent variable and control variables.)
The 1994 ("Mark 5.5") version of Summers
and Heston's (1991) Penn World Tables provided
the source for our measures of real
GDP per capita in 1965, 1970, and 1990. As
our proxy for human capital we used an updated
version of Barro and Lee's (1993) measure
of average years of education for the
population 25 years and older.
ANALYSIS
Our aim is to discover whether "Weberianness"
has an effect on economic growth
that is independent of the effects of other
variables classically associated with economic
development. There is a strong and
significant correlation between score on the
Weberianness Scale and total growth of real
GDP per capita during the 1970-1990 period
(r = .67; p < .001), but it could be argued
that Weberianness is simply a proxy for overall
level of development or existing stocks of
human capital. (See Appendix C for Weberianness
Scale Scores for the 35 countries in
our sample.) Such an argument cannot be
dismissed out of hand. We know that more
highly developed bureaucracies are more
likely to be found among the developed
countries (Rauch and Evans 1999:8, fig la,
fig. la; also see World Bank 1997). We also
know that high levels of human capital,
which are generally associated with high lev-
17 For the full questionnaire see Rauch and
Evans (1999, app. A). For coding of questionnaire,
see Talbot (1997, app. A).
18 Although bureaucratic structures were generally
stable during the period under study, experts'
comments indicated that the early 1990s
may have been a period of change in which a
number of bureaucracies were restructured in response
to pressure from multilateral agencies.
19 Question 9 is actually a composite created by
combining the answers to questions 17 and 18 on
the original questionnaire.
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756 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
els of development, are strongly associated
with growth. In fact, virtually no association
emerged between the degree of approximation
to Weberian characteristics and initial
levels of per capita income in this sample of
developing countries (r = .05). In this sample
of developing countries at least, it is hard to
argue that past growth or higher levels of income
are important causes, in themselves, of
more Weberian states. Put more optimistically,
it seems that low levels of per capita
income are not necessarily a barrier to
achieving more competent and coherent state
bureaucracies. Nonetheless, there is a modest
(though not significant) correlation between
the Weberianness Scale in our sample
and preexisting level of human capital (r =
.25, p = .15), and human capital has, in turn,
a significant positive effect on subsequent
growth.
Our first key result, then, is that even after
the effects of initial GDP per capita levels
and preexisting levels of human capital have
been controlled, the relation between the
Weberianness Scale score and economic
growth remains strong and significant. As the
regression equations below indicate, the
Weberianness Scale continues to have a powerful
and significant effect on economic
growth. Weberianness is not simply a spurious
proxy for effects of preexisting levels of
development or human capital.
The basic equation in unstandardized form
is:
% Change in GDP per capita 1970-1990 =
-44.54 - .02 (Real GDP per capita 1965)
+ 15.77 (Average years of schooling 1965)
+ 16.05 (Weberianness score). (1)
In standardized form the equation is:
% Change in GDP per capita 1970-1990 =
- .317 (Real GDP per capita 1965)
+ .307 (Average years of schooling 1965)
+ .615 (Weberianness score). (2)
The scattergram of growth regressed on
the Weberianness Scale with the effects of
initial level of GDP per capita and preexisting
levels of human capital controlled is
shown in Figure 1. One of the things that
stands out in this scattergram is the strong
degree to which the regional distribution of
Weberian characteristics parallels regional
differences in growth performance.
300 -
Singaporeu
&- 200-Taiwan
a 200 C
CY) Hong Kong Korea
o. I Portugal
XO U
100 Tunisia
~~~~ 100 *~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Malaysia
Syria
CD - *Morocco Thailand Spain
TUrkeyl MXO
L) 0 - Kenya UBrazil Ina
CL ~ ~ * Nigeria Egypt
Guatemalabi Ecuador = E Colombia UPakistan
.3 O , ,,g~atIsrael EC6te d'lvoire EGreece
Dominican EHaiti UUruguay
Republic ArninaE U ECosta Rica
-100 R EChile Sri Lanka
0. ~~~~~~~Zairefl er
(U *eru EPhilippines
-200 l l
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Weberianness Scale (Raw Score)
Figure 1. Scattergram Showing Relationship between Weberianness Scale Score and Unexplained
Growth in GDP per Capita, 1970 to 1990
Note: Unexplained growth is that growth not explained by level of GDP in 1965 and years of school in
1965.
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 757
400
300- c...
t ... n ..... nn .nn n n; .n . n ......... n nn .-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.............
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.n...,55.-......n
Mc 200~ciu
s. N =15
00 100 N
a) ~ I 12N4
-100- I I II
Africa Latin America Other East Asia
Figure 2. Boxplot of Growth in GDP per Capita by Region, 1970 to 1990
Regional differences in both growth in
GDP and Weberianness are summarized in
Figures 2 and 3. Figure 2 shows the range,
interquartile range, and median for growth in
GDP for each of four regional country groupings.
When the four regions are arranged in
the order that would be expected on basis of
the existing literature, they almost form a perfect
regression line with Sub-Saharan Africa
at the bottom and the four East Asian tigers at
the top. The Latin American region exhibits a
growth performance that is clearly inferior to
any region except for Sub-Saharan Africa,
largely because Latin America's growth experience
in the period we are examining is
dominated by the "lost decade" of the 1980s.
Figure 3 portrays regional differences in
Weberianness Scale scores and makes the
parallel between regional variations in
growth and regional variations in bureaucratic
structure graphically clear. Just as SubSaharan
Africa defines the bottom of the scale
in terms of growth, it is also the region in
which state bureaucracies are least Weberian.
Likewise, the four East Asian Tigers epitomize,
during this period at least, both high
growth and Weberian bureaucratic traits. The
Weberianness Scale appears to capture a key
institutional element of the "high performing"
East Asian economies while pointing to
an institutional deficit that may help explain
low rates of growth in Africa.
16 -
14- N 4
O 12- N 15
Cn,
X 10- N = 12 a e~aaa- e a~aa a aa<.-a''a'''".N
a - .-......... ...
u6
04-
0* I
Africa Latin America Other East Asia
Figure 3. Boxplot of Weberianness Scale Score by Region
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758 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Table 1. Standardized Coefficients from Regressions of Growth in Real GDP Per Capita, 1970-1990,
on Selected Independent Variables: 35 Developing Countries
Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Weberianness Scale .615** .537** .599** .247*
score (4.649) (3.700) (4.268) (2.418)
GDP per capita, 1965 -.317 -.270 -.324 -.150
(-1.749) (-1.472) (-1.753) (-1.251)
Years of school, 1965 .307 .319 .290 .090
(1.645) (1.725) (1.487) (.724)
Latin America -.180
(-1.242)
Africa -.056
(-.367
East Asia .696**
(6.638)
Number of countries 35 35 35 35
Adjusted R2 .460 .469 .444 .774
Note: Numbers in parentheses are t-values.
<.05 ** < .01 (two-tailed tests)
Table 1 presents a set of regressions that
add dummy variables for region to the basic
regression illustrated in Figure 1. The effects
of the Weberianness Scale still appear robust.
Introducing the dummy variables for Sub-Saharan
Africa and Latin America reduce the
Weberianness Scale coefficient only modestly
(Models 2 and 3). Even more important,
a significant "bureaucratic structure effect"
remains, even when a dummy variable for
East Asia (the Four Tigers) is included
(Model 4).20
Do the effects of Weberianness continue
to be significant in regressions that introduce
other variables used in standard
growth models? Levine and Renelt (1992)
surveyed 41 studies that used cross-national
regressions to explain economic growth.
They concluded that even though "over 50
variables have been found to be significantly
correlated with growth in at least one
regression" (p. 924), the list of variables
whose effects are truly robust is, in fact,
small. They identified three basic variables-initial
level of GDP per capita, investment,
and human capital-as most robustly
related to growth (1992:947, table 1).
Model 5 in Table 2 shows that the results
with respect to these variables using our
sample, time period, and variable definitions
are consistent with previous work, except
that the effects of human capital (years
of school) fall short of significance (using a
two-tailed test). Initial investment is the
most significant predictor of growth, and
the initial level of GDP per capita continues
to have a negative relation to growth.
When the Weberianness Scale is added to
this basic equation (Model 7), it becomes the
most powerful predictor of growth and the
adjusted R2 increases significantly. Model 6
in Table 2 shows the effects of two additional
variables that Barro (1991) found to have
significant negative effects on growth-government
consumption and revolutions. In
20 The effects of the Weberianness Scale are
robust in the face of different definitions of regional
dummy variables (two variations on the
East Asian dummy variable that include six or
seven Asian countries) and a broader version of
the African dummy (which adds three North African
countries). In fact, the Weberianness Scale
has a more powerful effect when the broadest
definition of "East Asia" is used. Only when the
East Asian dummy variable is included along
with the Sub-Saharan Africa or Latin American
dummy variable does the effect of the Weberianness
Scale drop below statistical significance.
Also, the Weberianness effect is not robust in the
face of the simultaneous inclusion of three regional
dummies, but as these three dummy variables
in combination include at least 18 of our 35
countries, this is an extremely stringent test.
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 759
Table 2. Standardized Coefficients from Regressions of Growth in Real GDP Per Capita, 1970-1990,
on Selected Independent Variables: 35 Developing Countries
Independent Variable Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8
Weberianness Scale - .490** .482*
score (3.647) (3.104)
GDP per capita, 1965 -.644** -.778** -.458* -.498*
(-3.171) (-3.642) (-2.554) (-2.402)
Years of school, 1965 .401 .420* .258 .211
(1.988) (2.068) (1.470) (1.115)
Average annual proportion .580** .434* .360* .298
domestic investment, (3.498) (2.463) (2.362) (1.861)
1965-1970
Average annual proportion - -.334 - -.179
government consumption (-2.024) (-1.169)
expenditure, 1970-1985
Average revolutions - -.136 - -.003
per year, 1970-1985 (-.950) (-.023)
Number of countries 35 34a 35 34a
Adjusted R2 .343 .373 .529 .521
Note: Numbers in parentheses are t-values.
a C6te d'Ivoire lacks data on government consumption and is omitted.
<.05 ** < .01 (two-tailed tests)
Model 6 when these variables are added to
the basic Levine and Renelt set (Model 5),
their coefficients are not significant, and they
result in only a trivial increase in the adjusted
R2.21 In Model 8 the Weberianness
Scale is added to Model 6. The results parallel
those of Model 7: The Weberianness
Scale once again becomes the most significant
predictor, and the adjusted R2 is again
significantly increased.22 Overall, these resuits
suggest that if data could be collected
for a broader range of countries, Weberianness
would become a valuable addition to the
existing literature on cross-national growth
models.
Given the powerful and robust relationship
between investment levels and growth in the
standard cross-national literature and the fact
that sociological work on cross-national
models of growth has also emphasized the
important role of investment (cf. Firebaugh
1992:125), it makes sense to look at the effects
of Weberianness on investment levels
as well as on rates of growth.23 Table 3
21 Consistent with Barro (1991), the coefficient
for government consumption is negative. But in
our results it is significant only at the p < .10
level. Government consumption does have a significant
negative relation with growth when investment
is omitted from the regressors (i.e.,
when only initial level of GDP and human capital
are included). The coefficent for the revolutions
variable is always nonsignificant (though consistently
negative).
22 It might be expected that there would be an
interactive relationship between government consumption,
the Weberianness Scale score, and
growth such that increased Weberianness would
reduce or reverse the negative effect of government
consumption on growth. We tried introducing
an interaction term (Weberianness Scale x
government consumption) into several different
regressions, but we found no significant effects.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting that there is a
strong negative correlation between Weberianness
and government consumption in our sample
(r = -.35; p < .05), which is consistent with the
observations in the case study literature that developmental
states are not usually "big" states in
fiscal terms.
23 Like Firebaugh, Barro (1991:426, table III)
also reported results using investment as a dependent
variable. He did not, however, use investment
as an explanatory variable in his "basic"
growth regressions (Barro 1991:410-13, table I),
presumably because of concern about endoThis
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760 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
Table 3. Standardized Coefficients from Regressions of Average Annual Proportion Domestic Investment,
1985-1990, on Selected Independent Variables: 35 Developing Countries
Independent Variable Model 9 Model 10 Model 11 Model 12 Model 13
Weberianness Scale .489** .477"* .456** .348* .370*
score (3.508) (3.044) (3.103) (2.146) (2.276)
GDP per capita, 1965 -.179 -.172 -.194 -.115 -.354
(-.936) (-.867) (-1.003) (-.603) (-1.609)
Year of school, 1965 .443* .445* .407 .360 .436*
(2.255) (2.225) (1.994) (1.814) (2.128)
Average annual proportion -.314
government consumption (-1.931)
expenditure, 1970-1985
Average revolutions -.136
per year, 1970-1985 (-.951)
Latin America -.026
(-.169)
Africa -.119
(-.747)
East Asia .267
(1.599)
Number of countries 35 35 35 35 34a
Adjusted R2 .400 .381 .392 .429 .434
Note: Numbers in parentheses are t-values.
a C6te d'Ivoire lacks data on government consumption and is omitted.
<.05 ** < .01 (two-tailed tests)
shows that the Weberianness scale score has
a consistently significant positive effect on
end-of-period investment levels, reinforcing
the position generally taken in the case-study
literature on "developmental states," which
emphasizes the role of the state in elevating
levels of private investment as a principal
mechanism through which states promote
higher rates of growth (Evans 1995).24
DISCUSSION
The evidence we have presented adds credence
to the proposition that state bureaucracies
characterized by meritocratic recruitment
and predictable, rewarding career ladders
are associated with higher growth rates.
Because the data refer primarily to core economic
agencies, the implication is not that
the entire bureaucratic apparatus must be
structured in this way to have positive effects
on growth. Having Weberian structures in the
strategic core of the bureaucracy may be suf-
ficient.
Weberianness provides a parsimonious,
analytically satisfying account of observed
differences in regional growth performance.
These findings support interpretations of
high East Asian growth that emphasize the
contribution of competent, cohesive bureaucracies
and offer a succinct, objective, and
replicable substitute for the unsatisfyingly
amorphous and atheoretical idea of an "East
Asian effect." The findings are also consistent
with explanations of low African growth
rates, which emphasize problems of governance.
More generally, these findings suggest
that an important contribution could be
made to the existing literature on the crossnational
analysis of growth if systematic evidence
on state structures were gathered from
geneity. We tried to avoid the endogeneity problem
by using only the prior level of investment in
our growth regressions.
24 We also explored the relationship between
Weberianness and levels of public investment
with the thought that introducing an interaction
term might reveal a significant positive effect of
public investment on growth contingent on high
levels of Weberianness. We found no such effect.
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 761
a larger sample of countries. Weberianness is
a potential sociological addition to the small
set of robust predictors of growth that have
been identified by economists in recent cross
-national studies.
Despite the promising character of these
results, we stress that the research we present
here is only a beginning. Several avenues for
further work are obvious. Gathering data on
bureaucratic structures for a larger sample of
countries is the first step toward a better test
of the robustness of the relationship found
here.25 The success of the initial effort we report
here argues that the returns from gathering
more and better evidence on cross-national
variations in the structural characteristics
of state bureaucracies would more than
justify the effort required.
A more ambitious goal is extending the
longitudinal coverage of data collection by
looking at changes in the character of public
bureaucracies in the 1990s. This task is relevant
to understanding the roots of the current
economic problems in East Asia. Previous
case studies emphasized that it might be
difficult to sustain the Weberian character of
East Asian bureaucracies (Amsden 1989;
Evans 1995). Recent commentators have
suggested that the declining integrity of
public bureaucracies has played an important
role in the deterioration of East Asian
financial systems (e.g., Chang, Park, and
Yoo 1998).
Finally, it would be illuminating to examine
the relationship between Weberianness
and a range of other political, social, and
economic variables that have been shown to
be related to growth. Political regimes
(Alvarez et al. 1996) and the policy outputs
commonly used in cross-country regressions
(e.g., black market premium, fiscal surplus,
price distortions) are two examples.26
Although much remains to be done, one
incontrovertible conclusion transcends the
exploratory character of our study: The
"Weberian-state hypothesis" deserves more
attention from sociologists and other social
scientists, both empirically and analytically.
Peter Evans is Chancellor's Professor and Chair
of the Sociology Department at the University of
California, Berkeley. His recent books include
State-Society Synergy: Government Action and
Social Capital in Development (edited collection,
Berkeley, CA. University of California, Berkeley,
International and Area Studies Publications,
1997) and Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial
Transformation. (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1995). He is currently
working on an edited collection entitled
Livable Cities: The Politics of Urban Livelihood
and Sustainability.
James E. Rauch is Professor of Economics at the
University of California, San Diego, and Research
Associate at the National Bureau of Economic
Research. He is author (with Gerald M.
Meier) of Leading Issues in Economic Development
(7th ed., Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
and editor (with Robert C. Feenstra) of Symposium
on Business and Social Networks in International
Trade, a special issue of the Journal
of International Economics (Vol. 48, No. 1, June
1999). He is currently working on a conference
volume entitled Networks and Markets.
Appendix A. The "Weberianness" Scale
The Weberianness Scale was created from 10 items
in the original questionnaire. The items (with fixed
response alternatives abbreviated) are shown below.
The full questionnaire and the recoding used in compiling
the scale are available at <weber.ucsd.edu/
-jrauch/webstate>.
The individual responses to the 10 questions (except
question 9) were aggregated to create a country-level
data set, in which each country's score was
the average of the responses of all experts answering
each question for that country. (Country ratings
on question 9 were based on the investigators' assessment
of combined country expert responses to
two questions regarding initiation and selectivity of
civil service exams.) Country averages for each of
the 10 questions were recoded into two or three categories
in such a way as to obtain as equal a distribution
of countries over the categories as possible.
The 10 questions were then combined to form a
scale.
25 A project is currently in the planning stages
at the United Nations University that would extend
coverage of the data to an additional 15 or
20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. So far, however,
most efforts to interest funding agencies in
support for building the necessary data infrastructure
have had disappointing results.
26 In another paper (Rauch and Evans forthcoming),
we examine of the relationship between
Weberianness and some commonly used bureaucratic
performance variables.
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762 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
1. Which of the following descriptions best fits the
role of these agencies in the formulation of economic
policy.
(1) Many new economic policies originate inside
them.
(2) Some new policies originate inside them.
(3) They rarely originate new policies.
2. Approximately what proportion of the higher officials
in these agencies enter the civil service
via a formal examination system?
(1) Less than 30% (2 ) 30-60%
(3) 60%-90% (4) More than 90%
3. What is roughly the modal number of years
spent by a typical higher level official in one of
these agencies during his career?
(1) 1-5 years (2) 5-10 years
(3) 10-20 years (4) Entire career
4. What prospects for promotion can someone who
enters one of these agencies through a higher
civil service examination early in his/her career
reasonably expect? Assuming that there are at
least a half dozen steps or levels between an entry-level
position and the head of the agency,
how would you characterize the possibilities for
moving up in the agency? [NB. more than one
may apply.]
(1) In most cases, will move up one or two levels.
(2) In most cases, will move up three or four
levels.
(3) Will move up several levels to the level just
below top political appointees.
(4) In at least a few cases, will move up to the
very top.
5. How common is it for higher officials in these
agencies to spend substantial proportions of
their careers in the private sector, interspersing
private and public sector activity?
(1) Normal (2) Frequent but not modal
(3) Unusual (4) Almost never
6. How would you estimate the salaries (and perquisites,
not including bribes or other extra-legal
sources of income) of higher officials in
these agencies relative to those of private sector
managers with roughly comparable training
and responsibilities?
(1) Less than 50% (2) 50-80% (3) 80%-90%
(4) Comparable (5) Higher
7. If bribes and other extra-legal perquisites are
included what would the proportion be?
(1) Less than 50% (2) 50-80% (3) 80%-90%
(4) Comparable (5) Higher
8. Over the period in question (roughly 1970-
1990) what was the movement of legal income
in these agencies relative to salaries in the private
sector?
(1) Declined dramatically.
(2) Declined slightly.
(3) Maintained the same position.
(4) Improved their position.
9. This variable was createdfrom the combined responses
of all experts for each country, based on
an assessment of the importance of civil service
examinations for entry into the bureaucracy.
(0) No civil service exams, or exams are of trivial
importance.
(1) Ambiguous based on experts' responses.
(2) Civil service exams are an important component
of entry to the bureaucracy.
10. Among graduates of the country's most elite
university(ies), is a public sector career consid-
ered:
(1) The best possible option.
(2, 3) Depends on circumstances.
(4) A second best option.
Appendix B. Variable Definitions and Data Sources
Variable Definition Source
Total percent growth in GDP Total percentage growth of real GDP Penn World Tables (Mark 5.5)
per capita 1970-1990 per capita from 1970 to 1990. (see Summers and Heston
1991)
Domestic investment, Average of the annual ratio of real Penn World Tables (Mark 5.5)
1985-1990 domestic investment (private plus public) Taken from updated data set
to real GDP over the period 1965 to 1970. from Barro and Lee (1993)
Domestic investment, Average of the annual ratio of real Penn World Tables (Mark 5.5)
1965-1970 domestic investment (private plus public) to Taken from updated data set
real GDP over the period 1965 to 1970. from Barro and Lee (1993)
(Continued on next page)
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WEBERIAN BUREAUCRACY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 763
Continued from previous page)
Variable Definition Source
Average years of schooling, Average schooling years in the total Updated data set from Barro
1965a population over age 25, 1965. and Lee (1993)
Government consumption, Average of the annual ratio of real Updated data set from Barro
1970-1985 government consumption expenditure net and Lee (1993)
of spending on defense and on education
to real GDP over the period 1970 to 1985.
Average revolutions, Average of the number of revolutions Updated data set from Barro
1970-1985 per year from 1970 to 1985. and Lee (1993)
Africa A dummy variable for the Sub-Saharan
African countries: CMte dIvoire, Kenya,
Nigeria and Zaire.
East Asia A dummy variable for the four "East Asian
Tigers": Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore,
and Taiwan.
Latin America A dummy variable for the Latin American
countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia
Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.
a Data for Average years of schooling, 1965 was unavailable for Egypt, CMte dIvoire, Morocco an
Observations for these four countries were estimated using data on total educational attainment from Nehru,
Swanson, and Ashutosh (1995). The Pearson correlation coefficient between these two variables was .80 (p < .001).
Appendix C. Weberianness Scale Scores for 35 Developing Countries
Country Weberianness Scale Score Country Weberianness Scale Score
Argentina 3.80 Mexico 8.50
Brazil 7.60 Morocco 7.00
Chile 5.00 Nigeria 3.00
Colombia 8.50 Pakistan 11.00
Costa Rica 9.00 Peru 5.00
CMte d'Ivoire 8.00 Philippines 6.00
Dominican Republic 2.00 Portugal 5.00
Ecuador 4.00 Singapore 13.50
Egypt 7.80 Spain 10.00
Greece 10.00 SriLanka 8.00
Guatemala 3.00 Syria 3.80
Haiti 4.00 Sra38
Hong Kong 11.00 Taiwan 12.00
India 10.00 Thailand 8.00
Israel 7.00 Tunisia 9.00
Kenya 1.00 Turkey 7.00
Korea 13.00 Uruguay 4.50
Malaysia 10.50 Zaire 4.00
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