Weberian Civil Service and Labor Enforcement

ABSTRACT Most workers in the developing world do not receive the benefits they are legally entitled to. Why, then, is there so little public enforcement? This paper argues that this is partly because of a lack of an autonomous and professional bureaucracy. Compared to a politicized labor inspectorate, a Weberian agency is free of the short‐termism imposed by electoral competition. This is key for ensuring enforcement, given that its costs are more immediate than its benefits. Using a novel dataset with objective measures of labor inspection inputs and fines across countries, we show that Weberian bureaucracies are more likely to enforce labor standards. We provide OLS and 2SLS estimates that address endogeneity concerns and use ethnographic evidence collected in Latin America to understand the mechanisms better. The evidence suggests that politicized bureaucracies have short‐term horizons and do not internalize the social benefits of enforcement (such as formal job creation and enhancement of the rule of law) because they take time to materialize.