The Impact of Ethnic Diversity in Bureaucracies: Evidence from the Nigerian Civil Service

The authors document the correlation between the workplace diversity of bureaucracies and public services delivered. The authors do so in the context of the federal civil service in Nigeria, the most important government bureaucracy operating in a highly ethnically fractionalized society in which ethnicity is a salient form of identity. The authors provide novel evidence extending the empirical literature along all three margins: in the context of Nigeria, the authors document the relationship between public service delivery and the ethnic diversity of civil service organizations. The impact of bureaucratic diversity on public service delivery in this context is not obvious. The analysis begins to shed light on whether the positive channels through which diversity operates, as stressed in the management literature (for example, increased skill complementary of workers in the production function), dominate the negative channels through which diversity may operate, as stressed in the macro literature (for example, divisions in preferences, free-riding on other groups’ contributions, ineffective social sanctions, etc.). Understanding the role of diversity in government bureaucracies is important because, as the state capacity literature has emphasized the effective functioning of government bureaucracy matters for poverty, inequality, and economic growth. The authors build on that analysis to examine the relevance of a key feature of Nigerian society: that it is highly ethnically fractionalized.