Why do some capitals deliver better for their citizens than others? While scholars building on the urban bias thesis contend that physical access to public services would be better than average in the center rather than the periphery, others point to an 'urban paradox', and that effective access to services may be highly unequal and contingent on having the right connections. Using newly collected data on citizen assessments of quality of government ('QoG') across all EU 27 capital regions we show that capital regions vary greatly in terms of how citizens collectively rate their public institutions. Using a strategic, comparable sub-sample of high and low performing capital regions in southern-eastern Europe: Madrid, Athens, Prague and Bratislava - we provide experimental evidence that show that connections are seen as highly important for career advancement in capital regions rated as having low QoG by the residents, and that political connections are more important than family or geographical connections. We also show that such connections are expected to lead to preferential treatment at the expense of public interests. This finding resonates with qualitative evidence building on extensive interview material with selected elites in the respective regions. In all, we suggest that capital cities that are 'co-opted'; where bureaucracies are politized, are less likely to serve the public good and deliver fewer impartial and non-corrupt public services to its citizens resulting in lower trust in institutions inter alia, and that some types of social ties are more important for bureaucratic performance than others.