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Centre for European Research

Research Seminar: Perils of politicization: Adding the perspective of public officials to the study of bureaucracy and corruption in post-communist Europe

25 March 2015

Time: 12:30 - 1:30pm
Venue: Arts II, Room 2.17

Speaker: Dr Jan Meyer-Sahling (Nottingham)

Research on bureaucracy and corruption tends to concentrate on cross-national research taking countries as the unit of analysis. This paper differs in that it takes the perspective of individual bureaucrats. It studies how public officials’ experience with bureaucratic institutions affects corruption within their sphere of work. Based on a survey of central government officials in two EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe and three non-member states from the Western Balkans, the paper examines the impact of civil service laws, the quality of their implementation, merit recruitment and the politicization of appointments on rumors of kickbacks in respondents' work organization. The study complements and qualifies country-level research, providing micro-foundations of the relation between bureaucracy and corruption in post-communist Europe

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