Replication Data for: Bureaucratic Capacity and Political Favoritism in Public Procurement

Government contracts are a huge business and, in many countries, are associated with considerable corruption. Much research emphasizes bureaucratic improvements as a means to reduce corruption. This paper draws a sharp distinction between the extent to which a bureaucracy is politically controlled and its technical capacity. In it, I argue that in politically controlled bureaucracies, stronger technical capacity facilitates corruption. In such contexts, more capable bureaucrats utilize their skills to shield favored firms from competition using complex strategies that minimize the risk of detection. I test the argument on a novel dataset of 54,623 municipal contracts in Guatemala awarded between 2013 and 2019 and 21,631 firm-politician ties. I find that more capable bureaucracies increase the likelihood of well-connected firms winning contracts through less competitive processes. This paper delivers important policy lessons, an original, widely applicable, measure of political networks and new insights into the sources of corruption.

政府合同是规模庞大的商业领域，在诸多国家中，其与较为严重的腐败问题密切相关。既往大量研究均强调，可通过优化官僚体系来降低腐败发生率。本文明确区分了官僚体系所受的政治管控程度与自身技术能力（technical capacity）之间的差异。文中提出，在政治管控型官僚体系中，更强的技术能力反而会助长腐败行为：在此类情境下，能力更为突出的官僚会利用自身专业技能，借助复杂策略为受偏袒的企业屏蔽竞争，同时最大限度降低腐败行为被发现的风险。本文基于全新数据集验证了上述论点，该数据集涵盖2013至2019年间危地马拉境内授予的54623份市政合同（municipal contracts），以及21631条企业-政客关联（firm-politician ties）记录。研究发现，技术能力更强的官僚体系，会通过竞争性更弱的流程，提升拥有深厚政商人脉的企业中标合同的概率。本文不仅提出了一种原创且可广泛应用的政治网络衡量方法，还为腐败成因的研究提供了全新视角，同时带来了极具价值的政策启示。