Stefano Gagliarducci and Marco Manacorda have a new paper which tries to quantify the relationship between holding political office and private benefit in Italy. They find strong evidence of nepotistic corruption.
They examined data from 1985-2011 of all political offices in the central, regional, provincial, and municipal government levels, and matched the politicians with their relatives living in the same municipality (since Italians have unique surnames, there is a rough match among people with same surname and living in the same area). They compared the earnings and employment of relatives when a family member entered office compared to those that did not have one.
Their findings,
They found that Italian politicians secured significant advantages in obtaining private sector jobs for their family members. And these favors appear to be reciprocated... Overall, winning an office generated an extra €10,000 worth of private sector earnings for family members... In fact, officials with larger budgets and more regulatory control over industries did indeed gain more benefits for their family. But there wasn’t any evidence that officials in the upper reaches of government did. This pattern is consistent with arguments that larger bureaucracies and less oversight are at the root cause of corruption. While higher-profile politicians are more powerful, they can face more scrutiny. Public backlashes may keep them in check, while local officials fly under the radar... The potential scope of Italy's nepotism could be quite large. The authors estimate that at a minimum, 0.4 percent of all private sector employment arises from familial ties to elected officials. That number would surely rise if it were to include friends and associates of politicians.
Another finding was about the emergence of a new nepotistic equilibrium as an outcome from the Italian anti-corruption drive of the nineties,
Bribery investigations launched in 1992—known as Operation Clean Hands—led to the conviction of a former prime minister, the dissolution of Italy’s main parties, and numerous trials of high-powered politicians... But the success of its crackdown may have incentivized a switch to the more subtle nepotistic corruption that the authors uncovered.
This shape-shifting nature of corruption is interesting, and especially the emergence of the nepotistic norm. It is the corruption of the developed world. This form of corruption is not confined to politicians, but is pervasive across corporate sector globally. Instead of cash transfers or other direct financial benefits, preferential access to high-paid or career launching jobs (especially in consulting and finance) have become a more sophisticated way to buy favours.
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