Politician–manager relationship, procurement decisions, and corruption risk in local governments.
This study combines agency and patronage theories to explore how the nature of local governing bodies – elected politicians or centrally appointed commissioners – influences managerial decisions and related corruption risks in public procurement. Agency theory suggests that discretion and weak overs...
| Publicado en: | Local Government Studies Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 124 - 148 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Feb2026
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191070357&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191070357 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03003930 LBQ jtl: Local Government Studies issn: 03003930 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Feb2026 vid: 52 iid: 1 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 191070357 10.1080/03003930.2025.2548485 ppf: 124 ppct: 24 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 440KB tig: atl: Politician–manager relationship, procurement decisions, and corruption risk in local governments. aug: au: Mussari, Riccardo Monteduro, Fabio Caramia, Simona Allegrini, Veronica affil: Department of Business and Law, University of Siena, Siena, Italy Department of Management and Law, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy su: Politicians Local government Political corruption Municipal government Public interest sug: subj: Politicians Local government Political corruption Municipal government Public interest keyword: agency theory Corruption local governments managerial discretion patronage politician–manager relations public procurement ab: This study combines agency and patronage theories to explore how the nature of local governing bodies – elected politicians or centrally appointed commissioners – influences managerial decisions and related corruption risks in public procurement. Agency theory suggests that discretion and weak oversight allow managers to exploit their expertise for personal gain, while patronage theory highlights how political actors may pressure managers to favour local elites. Analysing 16,953 procurement procedures from Italian municipalities, we applied multilevel mixed-effects and panel logistic regression models to compare decision-making under governing bodies having different nature. Results show that managers make more discretionary – and potentially more corruption-prone – procurement decisions under elected officials than under appointed commissioners. These findings highlight the dual risks of expertise asymmetry and political influence in high-discretion settings. Effective mechanisms are essential to prevent misuse and ensure discretion serves the public interest. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Local Government Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Local Government Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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