Neighbors with benefits: How politicians' local ties generate positive externalities when bureaucratic oversight is limited

Abstract

Existing literature suggests bureaucrats shirk when political oversight is limited or inefficient. When civil servants engage in multitasking, elected office holders have neither the capacity nor the incentives to monitor bureaucrat–citizen interactions. I argue that under such circumstances, public servants prioritize responding to local anomalies which are located in the immediate vicinity of politicians. Using a novel dataset on geolocated citizen problem reports from 40 urban municipalities in Hungary (N = 24,149), matched against addresses of mayors, I find that proximity to mayors' domiciles is associated with more prompt responses from authorities. Results suggest politicians' local roots generate positive externalities for their neighbors, as civil servants are incentivized to put those reports on the back burner which are the most invisible for their political principals. Further analyses suggest response speed is also positively associated with incumbent mayors' re-election chances. The findings refine our understanding on political oversight of bureaucrats and voters' expectations about likely behavior of locally embedded civil servants.