The real costs of plagiarism: Russian governors, plagiarized PhD theses, and infrastructure in Russian regions
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The real costs of plagiarism: Russian governors, plagiarized PhD theses, and infrastructure in Russian regions Anna Abalkina1 · Alexander Libman1,2 Received: 6 June 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2020
Abstract This paper investigates whether politicians who have plagiarized their PhD dissertations perform worse in running their polities than those who have not committed plagiarism. We look at the Russian regional governors and document that a substantial portion of them have plagiarized PhD theses. We find a negative association between plagiarized PhD of a governor and development of infrastructure (specifically, housing construction and spread of broadband Internet) in a region, controlling for other region-level characteristics potentially affecting infrastructural development. We argue that in the Russian context, a plagiarized PhD thesis is likely to indicate that a governor both is inclined to dishonest behavior and possesses poor managerial capabilities, which should have a particularly negative effect on the performance of their regions in terms of the development of infrastructure. Keywords Plagiarism · Dissertations · Governors · Infrastructure · Incompetence · Dishonesty · PhD theses
Introduction In 2011, the German minister of defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was accused of plagiarizing his PhD thesis, defended in 2007 at the University of Bayreuth. After the investigation initiated by the university confirmed the accusations, the PhD title was revoked, and Guttenberg resigned from his post in the German government. He was only the first of several high-profile German politicians who lost their jobs after their theses were found to be plagiarized. Similar cases have occurred in other countries: Romania (where accusations of plagiarism at least contributed to the demise of prime minister Victor Ponta) or Hungary (where president Pal Schmitt resigned after a plagiarism scandal).1 Still, the case of 1
A series of scandals connected with the discovery of plagiarism in the PhD theses of high-level officials occurred in Ukraine (Osipian 2017), Kazakhstan (https://www.interfax.ru/world/683970), the US (https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/us/politics/monica-crowley-treasury-plagiarism-investigation.html), Iran (Butler 2009; Keating 2013) and Tajikistan (https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20180
* Anna Abalkina [email protected] 1
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany
2
International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Scientometrics
Guttenberg caused a debate in Germany: should a promising politician sacrifice his career only because he once plagiarized in his PhD thesis, in no way related to his current work? Chancellor Angela Merkel’s initial reaction to the Guttenberg case summarizes this type of argument as clearly as possible: “I did not hire a research assistant or a PhD candidate or person with a PhD, I care
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