Nepotism as structural barrier: why anti-bribery reforms fail to improve employment access in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan’s anti-corruption reforms since 2016 have focused overwhelmingly on bribery, producing new legislation, oversight institutions, and nearly five thousand prosecutions in 2024. Yet labour market access remains widely perceived as unfair, and the Corruption Perceptions Index score has declined for two consecutive years. This paper argues that the reform agenda has been less effective against nepotism than bribery. Drawing on original survey data (295 respondents, four waves, November 2025 – February 2026), I distinguish bribery and nepotism exposure and estimate their separate associations with perceived employment barriers. Logistic regression shows that perceived nepotistic exclusion is associated with a more than fivefold increase in the odds of reporting employment barriers (OR = 5.18, p < 0.001), while reported bribery exposure shows no detectable independent association (OR = 1.09, p = 0.845; bribery-only subgroup n = 28, limiting power for moderate effects). The result is robust across seven alternative specifications, and neither income nor education measurably moderates the nepotism association — consistent with patronage networks creating near-absolute barriers that individual resources cannot overcome. The paper develops a distinction between purchasable barriers (bribery) and network-closure barriers (nepotism), arguing each engages different forms of capital and demands distinct policy responses.