Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes
Publication Date
2017-01Alternative Title
Careers, connections and corruption risks
Journal Title
JOURNAL OF POLITICS
ISSN
0022-3816
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Volume
79
Issue
1
Pages
89-104
Language
English
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Charron, N., Dahlstrom, C., Fazekas, F., & Lapuente, V. (2017). Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks: Investigating the Impact of Bureaucratic Meritocracy on Public Procurement Processes. JOURNAL OF POLITICS, 79 (1), 89-104. https://doi.org/10.1086/687209
Abstract
Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,000 public sector employees in 212 European regions—and a new objective corruption risk measure including over 1.4 million procurement contracts. Both show a remarkable subnational variation across Europe. The study finds that corruption risks are indeed significantly lower where bureaucrats’ career incentives exclusively follow professional criteria. In substantial terms, moving EU regions so that bureaucrats’ merit and effort would matter as much as in, for example, Baden-Wüttemberg (90th percentile) could lead to a 13–20 billion Euro savings per year.
Sponsorship
Funding for this project comes from the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Development of the European Union, project number 290529. This research project is part of ANTICORRP, (http://anticorrp.eu/ ).
Embargo Lift Date
2100-01-01
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/687209
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/255735
Rights
Licence:
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved
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