Nepotism, political competition and overemployment

Abstract

We extend the research on nepotism in public institutions by first investigating the determinants of nepotism, then by establishing the association between nepotism levels and overstaffing. We take advantage of novel and uniquely reliable data on levels of nepotism within Lithuanian municipalities to test three expectations: first, we expect to see a higher level of nepotism in municipalities with fewer economic opportunities. Second, we hypothesize that nepotism is more prevalent in regions with less democratic accountability. Third, we argue that because nepotism distorts institutional incentives, we should observe an association between nepotism and overstaffing of public institutions. Our analysis does not ultimately show a meaningful relationship between the supply of economic opportunities and penetration of relative networks in public institutions. Yet, our work does confirm that robust political competition increases accountability and reduces levels of state exploitation. We also establish a link between nepotism and a swollen public sector: the penetration of nepotism goes hand in hand with higher levels of employment in Lithuanian municipality administrations.

Identifying Faculty Unionization Barriers at Kabul University

“…Nepotism is a form of favoritism granted to relatives and friends in various fields, including business, politics, entertainment, sports, religion and especially in offering them a job without proper regard to their qualifications (Ragauskas and Valeškaitė 2020). Nepotism breaks the link between employment and meritocracy and can create state exploitation opportunities (Ragauskas and Valeškaitė 2020). In the public sector, it is considered a particularly toxic phenomenon.…”

Nepotism in Post-Soviet States: The Quantitative Assessment on Socio-Demographic Factors and the Corruption Perceptions Index

“…Although nepotism in the public sector represents a long-standing problem, there is little research on this phenomenon, primarily because of the inability to systematically measure it and obtain more or less reliable data at the country level. Besides, while studying nepotism, it is also necessary to determine the networks of relatives, which is a challenging task as it requires access to confidential information (Ragauskas & Valeškaitė, 2020).…”

Corruption risks in a mature democracy : Mechanisms of social advantage and danger zones for corruption

“…This thesis, I maintain, makes an original contribution to the research on nepotism by using a more rigorous methodology to identify proxy indicators of nepotism than existing studies. Previous research has largely tried to estimate the prevalence of nepotism in public organisations by examining whether the children of public sector employees are overrepresented in public sector jobs (e.g., Ragauskas and Valeškaitė 2020;Grilli and Allesina 2017;Allesina 2011;Scoppa 2009). However, as discussed in Essay I, these approaches have limitations because they rely on measures of macro-level or meso-level structures, in the form of an overrepresentation of relatives in public sector jobs, as proxies for corruption.…”

“…Nepotismi.e., situations in which public officials illicitly exploit their position to benefit their own relatives (e.g., Lesné and Gauthier 2014)may lead to a number of negative side effects for public organisations, including a drop in the level of competence (Dahlström et al 2012) and the development of corruption-tolerant values (Geys 2017). On the basis of these premises, a number of studies have attempted to estimate the prevalence of nepotism in public organisations on the basis of whether the children of public sector employees are overrepresented in public sector jobs (e.g., Ragauskas and Valeškaitė 2020;Grilli and Allesina 2017;Allesina 2011;Scoppa 2009). However, this research field suffers from two limitations.…”