“…Meritocratic recruitment in particular became a key policy recommendation for developing economies seeking to increase bureaucratic autonomy, lower, corruption, and minimize partisan influence (Dahlstr€ om, Lapuente, & Teorell, 2012;Meyer-Sahling & Mikkelsen, 2016;Nistotskaya & Cingolani, 2016). Second, research examined the quality of the bureaucracy beyond such procedural measures, focusing on fiscal capacity, the professionalization of bureaucrats, levels of corruption, and bureaucratic impartiality (Bersch, Praça, & Taylor, 2017;Geddes, 1994).…”