Measuring Nepotism and Its Effects on The Mexican Public Institutions

This project aims to explore the association between nepotism and public
institutions' performance in the context of the Mexican public sector, and
contribute to the understanding of the effects of patronizing employment in
Latin America. Emerging democracies face the challenge of building solid
institutional frameworks capable of hiring efficient public servants that deliver
public policies responding to societies and economies' current needs. Existing
literature identifies contradictory evidence about the association between
patronizing employment and public institutions' performance, claiming either
positive and negative effects on institutions. Moreover, the literature on
nepotism has failed to link the concept of nepotism with the measurement
effectively. Empirical studies overlook this connotation and focus solely on
partially quantifying the concept. The first part of the project is conceptual and
theoretical, in which it is intended to understand the concept of nepotism and
the strengths and weaknesses of the different methods of measuring and
operationalizing it. This will enable the project to focus on empirically testing
the argument that public officials' appointments based on family relationships
-instead of professional merit- could reduce public institutions' performance. I
test my hypotheses drawing on perception surveys and surname-based
methods, and also on original data from the judiciary and the majority of the
public institutions in Mexico.