Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

In this paper, we integrate the identity of legislators in a politico-economic analysis of parliamentary oversight whereby oversight activities depend on individual control costs and incentives. We focus on public servants selected into parliament who face a conflict of interests but also have lower control costs due to their experience and information advantage. If held accountable, oversight becomes a relatively attractive activity for them to win votes. Based on a novel data set for German Laender, we find that the fraction of public servants in parliament is positively related to the number of submitted parliamentary interpellations.