Varieties of connections, varieties of corruption: Evidence from bureaucrats in five countries

Adam S. Harris, Jan Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, Kim Sass Mikkelsen, Christian Schuster, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Why do some bureaucrats engage in corruption for personal gain, yet others for political gain? We show that these forms of corruption frequently do not coincide and offer an explanation: bureaucrats hired based on political and personal connections have different identities and incentives which compel them to engage in corruption for political and personal gain respectively. List experiments with a unique sample of 6400 bureaucrats in five countries in Africa and Asia support our argument. As theoretically expected, effects are strongest for bureaucrats whose political patrons remain in power (for corruption for political gain) and who do not need corruption gains to sustain their households (for corruption for personal gain). We also find that personal connections matter more than political connections for bureaucratic recruitment across surveyed countries. Our findings underscore the importance of studying varieties of bureaucratic corruption and of supplementing the politicization literature with studies of personal connections in bureaucracy.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)953-972
Number of pages20
JournalGovernance
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Governance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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