Neo-patrimonialism and Corruption: Evidence from 8,436 Firms in 17 Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article introduces four innovations to the literature on administrative corruption. First, it employs a neo-patrimonialism framework by addressing measurement, identification, and endogeneity issues that beset the literature. Second, unlike cross-country studies, it uses firms as the unit of analysis. Third, unlike the conventional literature, the article uses large-n (n = 8,436) panel survey data of key informants in 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, unlike the conventional literature, the article focuses on a particular type of corruption: the supply and demand for bribery. The authors find that the uncertainty associated with neo-patrimonialism has a strong, positive, and significant effect on the propensity of civil servants to demand bribes in exchange for services and for firms to supply bribes in exchange for winning government contracts. The results are robust to controls on the characteristics of firms and their regulatory environments. The article concludes with implications for research and practice.