Bureaucrats Hired through Connections Are More Dishonest and Less Pro-social

• In Event: Bureaucracies and Corruption in the Global South

Abstract

Numerous studies have linked bureaucratic politicization to corruption and worse public service delivery outcomes. Why does politicization have such effects? Most of these studies argue that these effects are a consequence of the incentives that politicization imposes on bureaucrats or the development of an esprit de corps that encourage commitment to public service. We argue in this paper for another mechanism: connection-based recruitment attracts and selects worse types— bureaucrats who are more dishonest and less pro-social. We test this argument with two lab-in- the-field behavioral games and survey data from 5000 bureaucrats in Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, and Nepal. The behavioral games allow us to assess bureaucratic behavior outside organizational incentive structures. We find that bureaucrats who indicate that connections helped them get their jobs cheat more in honesty games and act less pro-socially in donation games. Our findings add an important empirical micro-foundation to studies of bureaucratic politicization.

Authors

• Virginia Oliveros, Tulane University

• Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, University of Nottingham

• Kim Sass Mikkelsen, Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University

• Christian Schuster, University College London

• Brigitte Seim, University of Minnesota

• Rachel Sigman, University of Denver