TY - JOUR
T1 - Self-Selection into Public Service When Corruption is Widespread
T2 - The Anomalous Russian Case
AU - Gans-Morse, Jordan
AU - Kalgin, Alexander
AU - Klimenko, Andrei
AU - Vorobyev, Dmitriy
AU - Yakovlev, Andrei
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was made possible in part by a grant from the Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) program at Northwestern University, funded by the Rajawali Foundation in Indonesia, and was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported by the Russian Academic Excellence Project ‘5-100’.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Drawing on experimental games and surveys conducted with students at two universities in Russia, we compare the behavioral, attitudinal, and demographic traits of students seeking public sector employment to the traits of their peers seeking jobs in the private sector. Contrary to similar studies conducted in other high-corruption contexts, such as India, we find evidence that students who prefer a public sector career display less willingness to cheat or bribe in experimental games as well as higher levels of altruism. However, disaggregating public sector career paths reveals distinctions between the federal civil service and other types of public sector employment, with federal government positions attracting students who exhibit some similarities with their peers aspiring to private sector careers. We discuss multiple interpretations consistent with our findings, each of which has implications for the creation of effective anti-corruption policies and for understanding of state capacity in contexts where corruption is widespread.
AB - Drawing on experimental games and surveys conducted with students at two universities in Russia, we compare the behavioral, attitudinal, and demographic traits of students seeking public sector employment to the traits of their peers seeking jobs in the private sector. Contrary to similar studies conducted in other high-corruption contexts, such as India, we find evidence that students who prefer a public sector career display less willingness to cheat or bribe in experimental games as well as higher levels of altruism. However, disaggregating public sector career paths reveals distinctions between the federal civil service and other types of public sector employment, with federal government positions attracting students who exhibit some similarities with their peers aspiring to private sector careers. We discuss multiple interpretations consistent with our findings, each of which has implications for the creation of effective anti-corruption policies and for understanding of state capacity in contexts where corruption is widespread.
KW - Russia
KW - bureaucracies
KW - corruption and patronage
KW - political economy
KW - public administration
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U2 - 10.1177/0010414020957669
DO - 10.1177/0010414020957669
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85094594281
JO - Comparative Political Studies
JF - Comparative Political Studies
SN - 0010-4140
ER -