Impeachments, Partisan Alignment and the Local Bureaucracy: Evidence from Peru

Do political crisis at the national level alter or shift service delivery allocation at the local level? When budget planning and expenditure practices are regulated by law, the provision of public goods and services should be reflective of a locality’s needs. This paper uses rich administrative micro-data to study the effects of critical political events at the national level on the spending decisions of local bureaucrats and how these vary depending on the local government’s party alignment with respect to the incumbent in power at the national level. I study this relationship leveraging on Peru’s political crises represented by three presidential impeachments and the dissolution of Congress in a four-year period.