“Smallness does not justify corruption,” said Professor Tiina Randma-Liiv, guest of the fourth WeBER Talks. She is a member of the WeBER Advisory Council as well as a Chair of Public Management and Policy at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. Currently, Professor Radma-Liiv also serves as a Vice Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Member of the University Council.
She spoke with Milos Djindjic, WeBER Lead Researcher about how more attention must be given to the size of the state in the process of public administration reform. Smaller states have a smaller “pool” of people from which they can choose and hire experts from. Moreover, in smaller states, people know each other much better which can subsequently lead to corruption, as a high-ranking civil servant is often your neighbor or relative. Often, smaller states have a greater number of public servants per capita, making their public administrations larger than states that are bigger. Is a small state an obstacle on the way to a quality public administration or are two variables not correlated? Does the size of the country affect state functioning?