There is considerable debate about whether – and how – people’s support for one political party or another can change over time. In new research, Susan Webb Yackee examines how the political beliefs of US state government leaders can be influenced by the elected officials they work for. She finds that if a Democratic governor takes over from a Republican, agency leaders are nearly 50 percent more likely to move to the left in their party support, and if a Republican follows a Democrat, agency leaders are 60 percent more likely to move rightwards.

Most Americans think of a person’s partisanship as a stable political identity: once a Democrat, always a Democrat, or born a Republican, die a Republican. In the United States, we all know the occasional person who has become more extreme—either in person or online—in their partisanship. But people who switch which party they support seem more unusual.

Among political scientists, however, the extent to which individuals maintain a fixed partisan identification is among the most prominent and persistent debates about American politics. Many scholars take the position that partisan identification is a near-constant social identity that stabilizes over a lifetime. Others challenge this presumption and argue that new experiences and new information can occasionally break through psychological defenses such as confirmation bias and lead to changed identities more commonly than we may think.

Does the party identification of government leaders shift over time?

To date, this scholarly debate has focused on the American public. Less explored is the stability of political beliefs among those who run our government. As a result, most of the literature tacitly assumes that government leaders do not shift their party identification over time. In new research, my co-authors and I set out to be the first to challenge this assumption.

We study the partisanship of leaders of state government agencies across time. These agents lead large, powerful organizations and have considerable discretion over policymaking decisions. Importantly, they often lead these agencies across different political contexts as the political party in power shifts through elections.

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To investigate this, we use data from the American State Administrators Project (ASAP) which brings together surveys conducted among US state agency leaders every four to six years from 1964 to 2008. Each ASAP survey includes agency leader respondents from all 50 American states and covers agencies across all areas of government. Crucially, the surveys include detailed individual background characteristics, including respondents’ partisan self-identification and their contacts with other political elites.

Although the survey responses are anonymized, we know that some agency leaders have remained in their positions across time and have shared their opinions in more than one ASAP survey. When this is the case, using methods advanced by my co-author, we can (anonymously) link agency leaders across ASAP survey waves with a great deal of certainty based on several demographic characteristics.

This allows us to use a quasi-experimental research design to study whether the self-identified partisanship—of the same US agency leader—changes over time. Specifically, we look at whether an agency leader’s partisanship shifts because of changes in the leader’s elected political principals (i.e., state governors and state legislatures). As a result, we cross referenced the ASAP survey data with the party affiliations of state governors and the distribution of partisanship in state legislative chambers from 1964 to 2008.

Elected leaders’ politics shifts agency leaders’ political affiliation

We find strong evidence that bureaucratic elites adjust their party support in the same direction as the shift in partisanship of the elected officials they work for. If a Democratic governor takes over from a Republican one, the agency leaders that remain in their positions after the transition are nearly 50 percent more likely to move to the left in their political identification (9.8 percent vs. 6.7 percent) and nearly 40 percent less likely to move to the right (4.6 percent vs. 7.5 percent).

Conversely, if a Republican replaces a Democratic governor, the likelihood of an agency leader moving to the right jumps by 60 percent (12 percent vs. 7.5 percent) and the likelihood of their movement to the left decreases by more than 30 percent (4.5 percent vs. 6.7 percent). This suggests a flexibility of partisanship that is not often attributed to the bureaucratic elites who are responsible for leading government agencies. We see this response as a natural adjustment made by many bureaucratic leaders to their changing political environment.

We also find that agency leaders who are directly appointed or confirmed by elected officials are even more likely to shift their political affiliation in the direction of their new bosses. Additionally, we uncover evidence of this partisan adaptation being more common among agency leaders who have more frequent interactions with elected officials. Put another way, changes in the surviving agency leaders’ partisan allegiance following a change in the party in power are most prominent among those more closely intertwined with the world of those politicians.

Shifting political affiliations for career survival or actually adopting them?

These findings call for a re-evaluation of the (tacit) assumption in political science that the partisan identity of bureaucratic elites is stable across time. We hope that these insights will result in future research that explores changes in the leaders’ behavior and policy decisions. It’s one thing if bureaucratic elites are adjusting their political affiliations to survive under new management. If they are truly internalizing their new bosses’ values and shifting their policy directives, that adds additional layers to the significance of these adaptive adjustments.

These questions will only become more relevant to the study of American politics after the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Chevron doctrine that many experts believe will reduce agency independence. Survival through party transitions is already difficult for agency leaders. It may become much more so in the coming years. 

• This article is based on the paper, ‘I’m a Survivor: Political Dynamics in Bureaucratic Elites’ Partisan Identification’, in American Political Science Review. 
• Professor Yackee presented this research at the LSE-Kings-UCL London Public Policy Research Day on June 14, 2024. Yackee’s APSR Co-Authors are: Profs. Benny Geys (BI Norwegian Business School), Per Lægreid (University of Bergen), and Zuzana Murdoch (University of Bergen)
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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