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Career Paths of German Senior Civil Servants – High Mobility and Partisan Patronage in a Multi-Level System?

Christian Person
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Christian Person
Technische Universität Darmstadt

Abstract

It is generally assumed that in multi-level systems lower level parliaments and governments serve as a training camp and recruitment pool for political elites at the federal level. In this paper I present evidence of multi-level career paths of German senior civil servants from 1949-2014. The dataset contains biographical information of about 600 senior civil servants at the federal level and provides detailed insight in typical career paths between the Länder, Berlin and Brussels. In the paper I explore to which extent assumptions derived from research on political elites can be transferred to administrative elites and can be linked to the complexities of multi-level systems