What Price the Court of St. James? Or How Much for a Plum Ambassadorship?
The headline is taken from an amusing study by two Pennsylvania State University economists who calculate the implied price in terms of presidential campaign contribution of desireable ambassadorships. The subtitle explains it all: "Political Influences on Ambassadorial Postings of the United States of America." Interestingly, it appears that the current ambassador got the job on the cheap side (see below). The New York Times reports:
[T]he paper looks at diplomatic appointments in the Obama administration through January 2011. Dr. Fedderke and Dr. Jett theorize that the most desirable postings are those to countries “that are not obscure, dangerous, poor or of low interest to tourists.” Where “political campaign contributions (financial or otherwise) exercise an influence on the nature of posting received,” the desirability of a posting should correspond to the size of the campaign contribution.Comparing the amount of campaign contributions and the diplomatic posts landed, the Times reports that the researchers find:
Not surprisingly, the authors found that politically connected ambassadors, including former aides as well as donors, were statistically more likely to be posted to countries in the Caribbean, North America and Central America. But those whose political connections to Mr. Obama were measured in dollars, rather than administration service, had an increased chance of representing the United States in Western Europe, and a markedly smaller chance of serving in, say, Central Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. The study found that political ambassadors who had made campaign donations of $550,000, or bundled contributions of $750,000, had a 90 percent chance of being posted to a country in Western Europe...
When isolating a country’s wealth over other factors, Luxembourg came in at the top of the chart, with a posting there valued at $3.1 million in direct contributions, while an appointment to Portugal was predicted to have a value of $602,686 in personal contributions. The model suggests that bundlers can get the same posts for less: Portugal was valued at about $341,160 in bundled contributions, Luxembourg at $1.8 million....MORE
