we can now reinterpret the variable on the frequency of political interference as ‘formal’ involvement in the project cycle conditional on three measures of informal involvement. The coefficient on formal involvement is strongly positive, echoing the belief that politicians who work through formal channels can be a check and balance on the executive. The variables on politicians informal involvement in the project cycle are all negative, and a test of joint significance has a p-value of 0.02. However, the dominant effect arises from political interference by federal politicians, who are likely to have most control over the federal bureaucrats working in the 63 organizations we study in this sub-section. The coefficient on informal involvement is -1.4, such that a 1 percentage point increase in informal interactions between bureaucrats and politicians implies a greater than 1 percentage point reduction in bureaucratic productivity.

Together, the results mirror the opinions of public officials, that corruption, management and politics are all key aspects of the civil service environment impacting on productivity. We in fact see little evidence that the specific make up of civil servants has large impacts on productivity, but rather it is the broader incentive environment they are immersed that matters.

Overall, these correlations cannot be directly interpreted as causal in a wholesale way. For example, the relationship between staff capacity and productivity is certainly more complex than that reflected in Table 6. As reflected in the recent literature on the public service, experimental or quasi-experimental evidence provides more credible estimates of the linkages between specific aspects of service life. However, the picture painted in this section and the paper more widely present a structure in which to evaluate the significance of any individual result. Similarly, “experimental evidence on mid-level bureaucrats remains scarce” (Finan et al, forthcoming) and so such work will not provide a ‘thick description’ of the civil service in the developing world for many years. Further collection of representative surveys of civil servants will allow us to better understand where the largest gains to intervention might be within the civil service, and act as a reality-check on the consequences of insights gathered from other research methods.

# **6 Conclusion**

This paper presents descriptive statistics from eight surveys of civil servants undertaken across six countries with a combined population of three-quarters of a billion people. They illustrate the nature of bureaucracy in the developing world and present an opportunity to better understand the environment and experience of public officials who are central to serving the world’s poorest people.

## **Five Stylized Facts**

To summarize the discussion presented in the paper, I proffer five ‘stylized facts’ of the civil service in the developing world: _FACT ONE_ . **The civil service is a highly varied place** . In each of the surveys we analyse, there is substantial heterogeneity on a number of key margins from physical and human capital to the extent of political interference in the daily work of the service. Operational work that attempts to undertake reforms within a single service must therefore map that variation and understand the heterogeneous ways in which the service will respond to any reform efforts. Similarly, along a number of dimensions, we see stark distinctions between civil services across countries. As such, understanding what drives commonalities and differences between services seems to be a rich research agenda.

_FACT TWO_ . **The experience of the civil service is highly localized** . Neighbouring local governments or federal organizations can have management practices that are at the 10th and 90th percentile of 31