Despite cross-field implications, the strategic and political aspects of selection and appointment have received limited scholarly attention. Prior research has primarily focused on one system of selection or appointment. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the strategic and political elements of selection and appointment by investigating the influences, considerations, and strategies under different systems, with different constraints, and from different perspectives. The first part of this dissertation investigates the determinants of appointments to different bureaucratic job types in a legally unconstrained system by evaluating Papal appointments to the Roman Curia. The second part of this dissertation investigates how strategic behavior changes when a veto player is introduced to the selection and appointment process by evaluating how the political dynamics between the president and the United States Senate affect confirmation duration to agencies of different ideological backgrounds. The third part of this dissertation evaluates how procedural rules affect selection from within a body of colleagues by conducting a case study of the 2005 Papal Conclave, the first conclave under a rule that would have limited the “infinite game” until a two-thirds majority was achieved to elect a pope.