Measuring Nepotism and Its Effects on The Mexican Public Institutions

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This project aims to explore the association between nepotism and publicinstitutions' performance in the context of the Mexican public sector, andcontribute to the understanding of the effects of patronizing employment inLatin America. Emerging democracies face the challenge of building solidinstitutional frameworks capable of hiring efficient public servants that deliverpublic policies responding to societies and economies' current needs. Existingliterature identifies contradictory evidence about the association betweenpatronizing employment and public institutions' performance, claiming eitherpositive and negative effects on institutions. Moreover, the literature onnepotism has failed to link the concept of nepotism with the measurementeffectively. Empirical studies overlook this connotation and focus solely onpartially quantifying the concept. The first part of the project is conceptual andtheoretical, in which it is intended to understand the concept of nepotism andthe strengths and weaknesses of the different methods of measuring andoperationalizing it. This will enable the project to focus on empirically testingthe argument that public officials' appointments based on family relationships-instead of professional merit- could reduce public institutions' performance. Itest my hypotheses drawing on perception surveys and surname-basedmethods, and also on original data from the judiciary and the majority of thepublic institutions in Mexico.