Becoming Bureaucrats: The Entry, Orientation, and Formation of Public Servants

This Pre-Analysis Plan pre-registers analyses for a baseline survey of newly recruited Jharkhand state civil service entrants (n = 342) administered at the Shri Krishna Institute of Public Administration (SKIPA) in Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand, in northern India, during the cohort’s initial joint training period, prior to field postings. The study provides a rare window into the “supply chain” of bureaucracy—documenting who enters public service and how entry-level orientations vary. We explore how recruits reason about core dilemmas of public administration at entry: exercising discretion versus rule-following; impartiality versus need-based prioritization of citizens’ needs; exposure to political influence; and the role of identity in evaluating bureaucrats’ performance and citizens’ claims. The survey embeds three experiments: (1) a promotion conjoint that varies bureaucrat identity cues, experience levels, rule-following versus flexible behavior, and types of citizen-orientation; (2) a citizen-complaint conjoint that varies claimant identity cues, group size, gender, and political brokerage; and (3) an endorsement experiment that varies partisan sponsorship of a decentralization policy. We secondarily seek to explore heterogenous effects by socioeconomic status, gender, social background (caste, tribe, religion), selection into particular branches of civil service, and rank on the civil service entry exam. We further aim to descriptively explore recruitment patterns and potential barriers to entry that shape the composition of the bureaucracy.