Coercion, vertical trust and entrepreneurism in bureaucracies: evidence from the Nazi Holocaust

Franklin Mixon and Ernest King ()
Additional contact information
Ernest King: Department of Legal Studies, University of Southern Mississippi

Economics Bulletin, 2009, vol. 29, issue 2, 673-679

Abstract: Breton and Wintrobe (1982) develop a non-traditional (modern) model of bureaucratic management that is based on the notion of “vertical trust” – the notion that subordinates “trade services” that advance the goals of the bureau''s leadership in return for various “informal payments,” none of which are codified in formal contracts between the two sets of parties. Applying the model to the Nazi bureaucracy explains how Nazi functionaries, such as Adolf Eichmann, acted as bureaucratic entrepreneurs in accomplishing goals relating to “the Jewish question,” and ultimately “the Final Solution,” for their superiors, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler (Breton and Wintrobe, 1986). As an extension of prior research, the current study examines the hypothesis that the use these vertical trust relationships within the borders of their minor Axis partners (e.g., Hungary) worked more effectively for the Germans than coercion, which would have been required to a greater degree within the borders of occupied European countries (e.g., Holland). Specifically, our estimates suggest that, ceteris paribus, owing to their use of vertical trust networks the minor Axis countries each contributed about 152,000 more European Jews to the Nazi Holocaust apparatus than their German-occupied European country counterparts, wherein the Nazis relied more heavily on coercion.

Keywords: bureaucratic entrepreneurship; vertical trust networks; coercion; statistical decomposition tests (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-04-27
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2009/Volume29/EB-09-V29-I2-P18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-09-00234

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().