Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

Braendle, Thomas; Stutzer, Alois

doi:10.1007/s10101-012-0120-z

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(42 reference statements)

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“…Deputies working in education and as industry workers (blue collars) are less likely to be a ghost. For the former, this is consistent with Braendle and Stutzer (2013), who find that a higher share of public servants in the German Laender parliaments is associated with a higher number of interpellations. Concerning, the workers, they are often assumed to be low skilled politicians (see for instance De Paola and Scoppa, 2011), but it might be balanced by a higher motivation.…”

Section: The Characteristics Of the Ghost Deputiessupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Here, less than 8% of the deputies have a business background, whereas the most represented category is teachers, with about 15% of the observations. This category is composed of civil servants, which are particular MPs in term of skills, public sector knowledge and motivation (Braendle and Stutzer, 2013). Finally, Schooling (measured as the difference between the number of years required to obtain the highest level diploma of a deputy and 6, the legal age for mandatory school) is a measure of social capital.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Gavoille

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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This paper studies the characteristics of the ghost deputies of the French National Assembly, i.e. deputies who do not have any official recorded activity over a whole year. Using a rich dataset providing various information about all deputies from 1959 to 2012, the results indicate that the typical ghost deputy is an old man with a low level of schooling, member of a large party which does not support the government and who is elected in jurisdiction with a low level of political competition. However, personal characteristics are less and less correlated with performance over the years. Finally, ghost deputies face more difficulties to achieve reelection, but are penalized only at the first round, voters exclusively considering national factors at the second round.

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Section: The Characteristics Of the Ghost Deputiessupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Gavoille

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…Following Brändle and Stutzer (), in Fedele and Naticchioni () we carried out another robustness check concerning an alternative definition of public‐fit based on politicians coming from the public sector, i.e., public servants. Also in this case the baseline findings for public‐fit were confirmed, using both OLS and 2SLS.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moonlighting Politicians: Motivation Matters!

Fedele

Naticchioni²

2016

German Economic Review

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In this paper we study optimal choices of self-selection into politics and commitment once in office on the part of citizens with heterogeneous abilities and heterogeneous motivations. Politicians can moonlight, i.e., they can work in the market sector while appointed in parliament. Our theoretical framework shows that high-ability citizens may enter politics. Yet while high-ability non-motivated (market-fit) politicians are likely to shirk, high-ability motivated (public-fit) ones are more committed to parliamentary activity. We test our predictions by using a unique database of Italian parliamentarians for the period 1996-2006. We find evidence of advantageous selection of the market-fit and the public-fit politicians in that they both display a pre-election income greater than that of the Italian population. We also show that the commitment of the market-fit parliamentarians in terms of voting attendance is negatively affected by income opportunities, whilst this is not the case for the public-fit ones.JEL Classification: P16, J45, J24, J32

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“…Electing insiders to parliament who become accountable to the electorate might consequently help to align interests between principals and agents. One effect might be stricter parliamentary oversight, since public servants face lower control costs due to their experience and information advantage (for a detailed discussion see Braendle and Stutzer 2010b). The increased oversight activity induces the government and its subordinate public service to provide public goods and services more efficiently.…”

Section: The Trade-off Between Conflicts Of Interest and Competencementioning

confidence: 99%

Selection of public servants into politics

Braendle

Stutzer

2016

Journal of Comparative Economics

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Countries differ substantially in how they deal with politicians that come from the public sector. Most constitutions include incompatibility and ineligibility rules due to concerns about conflicts of interest and the politicization of the public service. We study how these rules affect the attractiveness of parliamentary mandates for public servants and thus the selection into politics. We compile a novel dataset that captures the fraction of public servants in 71 national legislatures as well as the respective (in)compatibility regimes. On average, there are 7 percentage points fewer public servants in parliaments where a strict regime is in force. Supplementary evidence shows that the fraction of public servants in parliament is positively correlated with government consumption as well as the absence of corruption.

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Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

Cited by 12 publications

References 50 publications

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Moonlighting Politicians: Motivation Matters!

Selection of public servants into politics

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