Victor Lapuente
Biographic Data
| ID | 321779 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victor Lapuente |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victor |
| FAMILY NAME | Lapuente |
| SIGNATURE | LAPUENTE V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6415-9422 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 830 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Uncooperative society, uncooperative politics or both? Trust, polarization, populism and Covid‐19 deaths across European regions
Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID‐19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witn…
El Leviatán contra la Covid-19
What is the relationship between States (governments and administrations) and the COVID-19 pandemic? This paper discusses the two potential causal relationships. On the one hand, how has the coronavirus affected and is affecting government and administrative structures? Are democratic systems and modernizing administrative reforms at risk? On the other hand, what effect do these governmental and administrative structures have on the better or wor…
Comparative Bureaucratic Politics
This article discusses one of the most important institutions in the modern world, namely public bureaucracies, from a comparative perspective. Bureaucratic organizations can be seen as a result of handling dilemmas along two critical dimensions. The first dimension concerns whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or, on the contrary, directly accountable to their political masters. The second dimension is about whether bureaucrats should always…
Trust, regulation, and redistribution why some governments overregulate and under‐redistribute
For many social scientists, government intervention is linked to low levels of social trust and corruption, while others associate it with high trust and low corruption. We aim to reconcile these contrasting views by distinguishing the opposing effects of trust on two alternative types of government intervention: regulation and redistribution. We argue that distrusting individuals demand more governmental regulation (H1) but less government redis…
The prudent entrepreneurs
This paper suggests a new argument to explain gender differences in public management: the “prudent\nentrepreneur theory.” We hypothesize that male and female public managers have three differences in\ntheir attitudes towards innovation. Firstly, female managers are more motivated to achieve results –\ninstead of following rules – and to do something useful for society. Secondly, female public managers are\nopen to new ideas and creativity, and m…
Politicization, Bureaucratic Legalism, and Innovative Attitudes in the Public Sector
Previous studies have identified institutional, organizational, and individual factors that promote innovation in public organizations. Yet they have overlooked how the type of public administration—and the type of administrators—is associated with innovative attitudes. Using two large, unique comparative data sets on public bureaucracies and public managers, this article examines how bureaucratic politicization and legalistic features are associ…
Goats or wolves? Private sector managers in the public sector
Public administration reforms have propagated the use of private sector management skills in the public sector, and an increased openness to managers with a private sector background. This has created a debate between those who think private sector experience improves public institutions by bringing core managerial values such as results orientation, efficiency, or openness to innovation, and those who argue that private sector experience can dam…
The effects of new public management on the quality of public services
Have New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet,…
Measuring quality of government in EU regions across space and time
Mayors and Corruption in Spain
In Spain, there has been widespread corruption in the area of public procurement at the local level, although corrupt practices have not affected all municipalities to the same extent. By comparing two municipalities with ‘clean’ and ‘rotten’ corruption records, this article shows that relatively independent bureaucrats—so-called trustees—can act as a check to prevent political moral hazard. Yet, in order to transform their de jure supervisory po…
Organizing Leviathan
Why are some countries less corrupt and better governed than others? Challenging conventional explanations on the remarkable differences in quality of government worldwide, this book argues that the organization of bureaucracy is an often overlooked but critical factor. Countries where merit-recruited employees occupy public bureaucracies perform better than those where public employees owe their post to political connections. The book provides a…
Above politics
Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks
Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,0…
Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe
Meritocratic administration and democratic stability
This paper presents a hypothesis for understanding democratic stability based on the distinction between politicized and meritocratic bureaucracies. We argue that in a politicized administration, the professional careers of large numbers of government officials depend directly upon which party wins the elections. This increases the likelihood that the government will take opportunistic actions aimed at surviving in office at any cost; that is, be…
Civil War Spain Versus Swedish Harmony
In 1936, while Sweden gave birth to one of the most peaceful solutions to class conflict (i.e., the neo-corporatist welfare state), Spain gave birth to one of the most violent outcomes of class conflict: the Spanish Civil War. Why did the political and socio-economic elites choose collaboration in Sweden and violent confrontation in Spain? This article underlines an overlooked intervening factor: the organization of the bureaucracy. In the late 1…
Quality of Government and Corruption from a European Perspective
In this book the authors tackle the concept of 'quality of government' (QoG) both conceptually and empirically and apply their focus to EU countries and regions. In a pioneering empirical effort, they map out regional QoG for the first time for 172 NUTS 1 and 2 regions throughout 18 countries in the EU, and provide a detailed methodology. They follow up the quantitative assessment with three case studies demonstrating the wide variation of QoG fo…
Regional Governance Matters
Charron N., Dijkstra L. and Lapuente V. Regional governance matters: quality of government within European Union member states, Regional Studies. This study presents novel data (European QoG Index – EQI) on the ‘quality of government’ (QoG) – understood as low corruption, impartial public services and rule of law – for national and sub-national levels in twenty-seven European Union countries. The EQI shows notable within-country variations: while…
Why Do Some Regions in Europe Have a Higher Quality of Government
While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutiona…
Adam Smith or Machiavelli? Political incentives for contracting out local public services
The Merit of Meritocratization
Comparative studies of corruption focus on the selection and incentives of policymakers. With few exceptions, actors who are in charge of implementing policies have been neglected. This article analyzes an original data set on the bureaucratic features and its effects on corruption in fifty-two countries. Two empirical findings challenge the conventional wisdom in literature. First, certain bureaucratic factors, particularly meritocratic recruitm…
Which Dictators Produce Quality of Government
Doomed to disagree? Party-voter discipline and policy gridlock under divided government
This article explains the existence of policy gridlock in systems with divided government, even when there are policies that are universally preferred to the status quo. It is shown analytically that one dimension of party institutionalization (the degree of party-voter discipline) may create incentives for veto players to block policies that, ideologically, they might like. This is the case because when party attachments dominate voters' behavio…
A Tale of Two Cities
This paper presents a theory that predicts under what circumstances self-interested politicians 'bureaucratise' their administrations, in the sense that they delegate the powers to hire, fire and promote public employees to autonomous bodies (like civil service commissions). The main testable proposition is that, in polities with a higher concentration of powers, politicians will bureaucratise their administrations to overcome time inconsistency …
Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Performance-Related Pay in the Public Sector
This article aims to explain cross-country variations in a paradigmatic element of the new public management reforms: the shift from low-powered incentives (i.e., flat salaries) to high-powered ones (i.e., performance-related pay [PRP] systems). It presents a theoretical model based on insights developed for understanding the success of performance-related incentives in the private sector. Economic literature has underlined the need for a system …
The Merit of Meritocratization
Comparative studies of corruption focus on the selection and incentives of policymakers. With few exceptions, actors who are in charge of implementing policies have been neglected. This article analyzes an original data set on the bureaucratic features and its effects on corruption in fifty-two countries. Two empirical findings challenge the conventional wisdom in literature. First, certain bureaucratic factors, particularly meritocratic recruitm…
Regional Governance Matters
Charron N., Dijkstra L. and Lapuente V. Regional governance matters: quality of government within European Union member states, Regional Studies. This study presents novel data (European QoG Index – EQI) on the ‘quality of government’ (QoG) – understood as low corruption, impartial public services and rule of law – for national and sub-national levels in twenty-seven European Union countries. The EQI shows notable within-country variations: while…
Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe
Does democracy produce quality of government
This article analyses the effects of political regimes over state capacity or the quality of government (QoG): Do democratic states perform better than authoritarian ones? Previous studies point to a nonlinear relationship between democracy and government quality. It is argued here that QoG is a function of both forces of supply (leaders who have the power to make reforms) and demand (citizens' desire for mid‐ to long‐term investments over short‐…
Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks
Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,0…
The effects of new public management on the quality of public services
Have New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet,…
Why Do Some Regions in Europe Have a Higher Quality of Government
While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutiona…
Comparative Bureaucratic Politics
This article discusses one of the most important institutions in the modern world, namely public bureaucracies, from a comparative perspective. Bureaucratic organizations can be seen as a result of handling dilemmas along two critical dimensions. The first dimension concerns whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or, on the contrary, directly accountable to their political masters. The second dimension is about whether bureaucrats should always…
Measuring quality of government in EU regions across space and time
Which Dictators Produce Quality of Government
Uncooperative society, uncooperative politics or both? Trust, polarization, populism and Covid‐19 deaths across European regions
Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID‐19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witn…
Meritocratic administration and democratic stability
This paper presents a hypothesis for understanding democratic stability based on the distinction between politicized and meritocratic bureaucracies. We argue that in a politicized administration, the professional careers of large numbers of government officials depend directly upon which party wins the elections. This increases the likelihood that the government will take opportunistic actions aimed at surviving in office at any cost; that is, be…
Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Performance-Related Pay in the Public Sector
This article aims to explain cross-country variations in a paradigmatic element of the new public management reforms: the shift from low-powered incentives (i.e., flat salaries) to high-powered ones (i.e., performance-related pay [PRP] systems). It presents a theoretical model based on insights developed for understanding the success of performance-related incentives in the private sector. Economic literature has underlined the need for a system …
Adam Smith or Machiavelli? Political incentives for contracting out local public services
To the Short‐Sighted Victor Belong the Spoils
This article addresses a persistent puzzle in social science: Why do some rulers adopt merit systems, refusing to enjoy the spoils of their victories? Dominant explanations underscore the importance of interactions among core constituencies of voters, legislators, and executives in a democratic polity but cannot explain the adoption of merit in autocracies and are not corroborated empirically outside Anglo‐Saxon democracies. Based on insights fro…
Trust, regulation, and redistribution why some governments overregulate and under‐redistribute
For many social scientists, government intervention is linked to low levels of social trust and corruption, while others associate it with high trust and low corruption. We aim to reconcile these contrasting views by distinguishing the opposing effects of trust on two alternative types of government intervention: regulation and redistribution. We argue that distrusting individuals demand more governmental regulation (H1) but less government redis…
Civil War Spain Versus Swedish Harmony
In 1936, while Sweden gave birth to one of the most peaceful solutions to class conflict (i.e., the neo-corporatist welfare state), Spain gave birth to one of the most violent outcomes of class conflict: the Spanish Civil War. Why did the political and socio-economic elites choose collaboration in Sweden and violent confrontation in Spain? This article underlines an overlooked intervening factor: the organization of the bureaucracy. In the late 1…
Goats or wolves? Private sector managers in the public sector
Public administration reforms have propagated the use of private sector management skills in the public sector, and an increased openness to managers with a private sector background. This has created a debate between those who think private sector experience improves public institutions by bringing core managerial values such as results orientation, efficiency, or openness to innovation, and those who argue that private sector experience can dam…
The prudent entrepreneurs
This paper suggests a new argument to explain gender differences in public management: the “prudent\nentrepreneur theory.” We hypothesize that male and female public managers have three differences in\ntheir attitudes towards innovation. Firstly, female managers are more motivated to achieve results –\ninstead of following rules – and to do something useful for society. Secondly, female public managers are\nopen to new ideas and creativity, and m…
Doomed to disagree? Party-voter discipline and policy gridlock under divided government
This article explains the existence of policy gridlock in systems with divided government, even when there are policies that are universally preferred to the status quo. It is shown analytically that one dimension of party institutionalization (the degree of party-voter discipline) may create incentives for veto players to block policies that, ideologically, they might like. This is the case because when party attachments dominate voters' behavio…
A Tale of Two Cities
This paper presents a theory that predicts under what circumstances self-interested politicians 'bureaucratise' their administrations, in the sense that they delegate the powers to hire, fire and promote public employees to autonomous bodies (like civil service commissions). The main testable proposition is that, in polities with a higher concentration of powers, politicians will bureaucratise their administrations to overcome time inconsistency …
Mayors and Corruption in Spain
In Spain, there has been widespread corruption in the area of public procurement at the local level, although corrupt practices have not affected all municipalities to the same extent. By comparing two municipalities with ‘clean’ and ‘rotten’ corruption records, this article shows that relatively independent bureaucrats—so-called trustees—can act as a check to prevent political moral hazard. Yet, in order to transform their de jure supervisory po…
Above politics
Political Regimes, Bureaucracy, and Scientific Productivity
Can a scientist trust that the government is going to pay him or her fairly? In the science–government relationship, an incumbent may be better off if he or she does not provide—or does not provide a fair pay to public scientists. We propose a simple game‐theoretic model for understanding the trust problem in the relationship between governments and scientists. The model shows how with reliable governments (democracies), bureaucratic contracts (e…
Political Regimes, Bureaucracy, and Scientific Productivity
Can a scientist trust that the government is going to pay him or her fairly? In the science–government relationship, an incumbent may be better off if he or she does not provide—or does not provide a fair pay to public scientists. We propose a simple game‐theoretic model for understanding the trust problem in the relationship between governments and scientists. The model shows how with reliable governments (democracies), bureaucratic contracts (e…
To the Short‐Sighted Victor Belong the Spoils
This article addresses a persistent puzzle in social science: Why do some rulers adopt merit systems, refusing to enjoy the spoils of their victories? Dominant explanations underscore the importance of interactions among core constituencies of voters, legislators, and executives in a democratic polity but cannot explain the adoption of merit in autocracies and are not corroborated empirically outside Anglo‐Saxon democracies. Based on insights fro…
A Tale of Two Cities
This paper presents a theory that predicts under what circumstances self-interested politicians 'bureaucratise' their administrations, in the sense that they delegate the powers to hire, fire and promote public employees to autonomous bodies (like civil service commissions). The main testable proposition is that, in polities with a higher concentration of powers, politicians will bureaucratise their administrations to overcome time inconsistency …
Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Performance-Related Pay in the Public Sector
This article aims to explain cross-country variations in a paradigmatic element of the new public management reforms: the shift from low-powered incentives (i.e., flat salaries) to high-powered ones (i.e., performance-related pay [PRP] systems). It presents a theoretical model based on insights developed for understanding the success of performance-related incentives in the private sector. Economic literature has underlined the need for a system …
Does democracy produce quality of government
This article analyses the effects of political regimes over state capacity or the quality of government (QoG): Do democratic states perform better than authoritarian ones? Previous studies point to a nonlinear relationship between democracy and government quality. It is argued here that QoG is a function of both forces of supply (leaders who have the power to make reforms) and demand (citizens' desire for mid‐ to long‐term investments over short‐…
Which Dictators Produce Quality of Government
Doomed to disagree? Party-voter discipline and policy gridlock under divided government
This article explains the existence of policy gridlock in systems with divided government, even when there are policies that are universally preferred to the status quo. It is shown analytically that one dimension of party institutionalization (the degree of party-voter discipline) may create incentives for veto players to block policies that, ideologically, they might like. This is the case because when party attachments dominate voters' behavio…
Adam Smith or Machiavelli? Political incentives for contracting out local public services
The Merit of Meritocratization
Comparative studies of corruption focus on the selection and incentives of policymakers. With few exceptions, actors who are in charge of implementing policies have been neglected. This article analyzes an original data set on the bureaucratic features and its effects on corruption in fifty-two countries. Two empirical findings challenge the conventional wisdom in literature. First, certain bureaucratic factors, particularly meritocratic recruitm…
Quality of Government and Corruption from a European Perspective
In this book the authors tackle the concept of 'quality of government' (QoG) both conceptually and empirically and apply their focus to EU countries and regions. In a pioneering empirical effort, they map out regional QoG for the first time for 172 NUTS 1 and 2 regions throughout 18 countries in the EU, and provide a detailed methodology. They follow up the quantitative assessment with three case studies demonstrating the wide variation of QoG fo…
Regional Governance Matters
Charron N., Dijkstra L. and Lapuente V. Regional governance matters: quality of government within European Union member states, Regional Studies. This study presents novel data (European QoG Index – EQI) on the ‘quality of government’ (QoG) – understood as low corruption, impartial public services and rule of law – for national and sub-national levels in twenty-seven European Union countries. The EQI shows notable within-country variations: while…
Why Do Some Regions in Europe Have a Higher Quality of Government
While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutiona…
Mapping the Regional Divide in Europe
Meritocratic administration and democratic stability
This paper presents a hypothesis for understanding democratic stability based on the distinction between politicized and meritocratic bureaucracies. We argue that in a politicized administration, the professional careers of large numbers of government officials depend directly upon which party wins the elections. This increases the likelihood that the government will take opportunistic actions aimed at surviving in office at any cost; that is, be…
Civil War Spain Versus Swedish Harmony
In 1936, while Sweden gave birth to one of the most peaceful solutions to class conflict (i.e., the neo-corporatist welfare state), Spain gave birth to one of the most violent outcomes of class conflict: the Spanish Civil War. Why did the political and socio-economic elites choose collaboration in Sweden and violent confrontation in Spain? This article underlines an overlooked intervening factor: the organization of the bureaucracy. In the late 1…
Organizing Leviathan
Why are some countries less corrupt and better governed than others? Challenging conventional explanations on the remarkable differences in quality of government worldwide, this book argues that the organization of bureaucracy is an often overlooked but critical factor. Countries where merit-recruited employees occupy public bureaucracies perform better than those where public employees owe their post to political connections. The book provides a…
Above politics
Careers, Connections, and Corruption Risks
Why do officials in some countries favor entrenched contractors, while others assign public contracts more impartially? This article emphasizes the important interplay between politics and bureaucracy. It suggests that corruption risks are lower when bureaucrats’ careers do not depend on political connections but on their peers. We test this hypothesis with a novel measure of career incentives in the public sector—using a survey of more than 18,0…
Mayors and Corruption in Spain
In Spain, there has been widespread corruption in the area of public procurement at the local level, although corrupt practices have not affected all municipalities to the same extent. By comparing two municipalities with ‘clean’ and ‘rotten’ corruption records, this article shows that relatively independent bureaucrats—so-called trustees—can act as a check to prevent political moral hazard. Yet, in order to transform their de jure supervisory po…
Measuring quality of government in EU regions across space and time
Politicization, Bureaucratic Legalism, and Innovative Attitudes in the Public Sector
Previous studies have identified institutional, organizational, and individual factors that promote innovation in public organizations. Yet they have overlooked how the type of public administration—and the type of administrators—is associated with innovative attitudes. Using two large, unique comparative data sets on public bureaucracies and public managers, this article examines how bureaucratic politicization and legalistic features are associ…
Goats or wolves? Private sector managers in the public sector
Public administration reforms have propagated the use of private sector management skills in the public sector, and an increased openness to managers with a private sector background. This has created a debate between those who think private sector experience improves public institutions by bringing core managerial values such as results orientation, efficiency, or openness to innovation, and those who argue that private sector experience can dam…
The effects of new public management on the quality of public services
Have New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet,…
Trust, regulation, and redistribution why some governments overregulate and under‐redistribute
For many social scientists, government intervention is linked to low levels of social trust and corruption, while others associate it with high trust and low corruption. We aim to reconcile these contrasting views by distinguishing the opposing effects of trust on two alternative types of government intervention: regulation and redistribution. We argue that distrusting individuals demand more governmental regulation (H1) but less government redis…
The prudent entrepreneurs
This paper suggests a new argument to explain gender differences in public management: the “prudent\nentrepreneur theory.” We hypothesize that male and female public managers have three differences in\ntheir attitudes towards innovation. Firstly, female managers are more motivated to achieve results –\ninstead of following rules – and to do something useful for society. Secondly, female public managers are\nopen to new ideas and creativity, and m…
Political science (27 works) · Law (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (21 works) · Economics (16 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (15 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Public Administration (13 works) · Government (linguistics (12 works) · Corruption and Economic Development (11 works)