The pages in this section contain most of the quantitative, and samples of the qualitative, data used for my and my colleagues' books and papers on Bolivia, Colombia and Ethiopia.

We combine qualitative and quantitative methods (Q2) and draw on theory from economics and political science, as well as sociology and anthropology, to develop innovative approaches that allow us to understand the pathologies of underdevelopment and how to overcome them.

Why Q2?

Q2 methods combine deep understanding of complex, nuanced phenomena from qualitative evidence with the broad generality (external validity) afforded by econometric evidence.  At their best, they allow researchers to reap the advantages of both while avoiding the pitfalls of each, opening the door to a higher level of methodological rigor than either can achieve independently.

As an example, Decentralization and Popular Democracy is a book-length application of Q2.  Its approach is a one country, large-N comparative methodology at the municipal level.  The book's underlying question is: Why do some local governments perform well and others badly?  This quickly becomes: How does (democratic) local governance work, and what are the major ways in which it can be deformed?  The empirical strategy combines deep insight into the causes of government quality in nine case studies, including two at the extremes of municipal performance, with national data on all of the country’s municipalities.

In this way, the book arrives at an explanation that has both generality and deep understanding.  It avoids problems of cross-country comparison (e.g. different institutions, political regimes, idiosyncratic shocks) while still benefiting from the formal rigor of large-N studies.  And it retains a central focus on complex, nuanced explanatory factors – such as accountability, trust, and political entrepreneurialism – that are hard to treat with quantitative data alone.

The role of case studies

How exactly do we combine case studies with econometrics to answer these questions?  Data show that local governments across Bolivia invested in systematically different sectors than central government had before, and did so in ways that were far more responsive to local needs.  How did this come about?  What were the political and social processes at the micro level that led to these aggregate outcomes?  To address these questions, we conducted six months of fieldwork in nine municipalities in 1997, followed by an updating round of fieldwork in 2009.  The research was designed as a coherent set of case studies to facilitate comparative analysis.

The nine municipalities had to be broadly representative of Bolivia’s economic, political, geographical, and demographic diversity.  We first used the database to identify a short-list of promising municipalities, then discussed these with a number of knowledgeable observers who had direct experience of those local governments and social contexts, and then selected the final list of ten cases.  We designed detailed questionnaires for different types of semi-structured and unstructured interviews.  We piloted the questionnaires in Pucarani, which revealed a number of problems with phrasing and question ordering.  We then revised the questionnaires again, discarded the results from the pilot, and headed into the field.

We interviewed over 300 people in a systematic program applied to each municipality, collected maps, budgets, and other local data, and observed local life generally.  The results of this research became nine case studies of different local responses to the same decentralization shock, and the drivers of those different responses.  The two case studies highlighted in the book are extreme cases of municipal failure and success.  An extremal focus places the systematic differences in decision-making that characterize each in stark relief.  This, in turn, facilitates theorizing about institutional causes, effects and necessary conditions relating to the quality of local government.

Hence chapters 2 and 3, which telescope in from the national level to examine how governance operates at the municipal and sub-municipal level.  We rely here on qualitative evidence and thick description to analyze the micro-level workings of local government in the worst and best case studies, Viacha and Charagua, which represent well the extremes of municipal performance in Bolivia as a whole.  The other 7 cases confirm the analytical insights, and are written up as a “bonus” web-only chapter.

Questionaires

Here are the questionnaires and interview guides used in all the case studies (in Spanish).

• Mayor, Municipal Councillor, and Oversight Committee

• Mayor and Municipal Councillor, 2nd Round

• Oversight Committee, 2nd Round

• Key Informants (e.g. business and religious leaders, NGOs)

• LOCPARTY: Local Political Party Leaders

• OTB: Grass-Roots Organization

• OTB2: Grass-Roots Organization, 2nd Round

• Key Informants, 2007

• Key Informants, 2007, additional questions

• Key Informants, 2009

• Interview Guide — tips & reminders for the interviewer