Measuring Nepotism and Its Effects on The Mexican Public Institutions

本项目旨在探讨在墨西哥公共部门背景下裙带关系与公共机构绩效之间的关系，并有助于理解光顾性就业在拉丁美洲的影响。新兴民主国家面临着建立稳固的制度框架的挑战，这些制度框架能够雇用高效的公务员，以提供符合社会和经济当前需求的公共政策。现有的文献发现了关于光顾就业与公共机构绩效之间关系的相互矛盾的证据，声称对机构有积极和消极的影响。此外，有关裙带关系的文献未能有效地将裙带关系的概念与测量联系起来。实证研究忽略了这一内涵，只专注于部分量化这一概念。项目的第一部分是概念性和理论性的，旨在理解裙带关系的概念，以及衡量和实施裙带关系的不同方法的优缺点。这将使该项目能够集中精力对基于家庭关系而非专业能力的公职人员任命可能降低公共机构绩效的论点进行实证检验。我利用感知调查和基于姓氏的方法，以及来自墨西哥司法机构和大多数公共机构的原始数据，来检验我的假设。

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.