Does reducing politicians’ control over public employees’ hiring and firing improve bureaucratic performance? Arianna Ornaghi answers this question exploiting population-based mandates for U.S. municipal police department merit systems in a regression discontinuity design. Merit system mandates improve performance: crime rates are lower in departments operating under a merit system than in departments under a spoils system. Changes in resources or police officers’ characteristics do not drive the effect, but Mr. Ornaghi provides suggestive evidence that the limitations to politicians’ ability to influence police officers are instead important.

Christopher Roth and his collaborators have conducted a natural field experiment with a major European party to test whether giving party supporters more voice increases their engagement in the party's electoral campaign. In the experiment, the party asked a random subset of supporters for their opinions on the importance of different policy areas. Giving supporters opportunities to voice their opinions increases their engagement in the campaign as measured using behavioral data from the party's smartphone application. The researchers evidence highlights the importance of voice for increasing political engagement.