Does Development Aid Undermine Political Accountability? Leader and Constituent Responses to a Large-Scale Intervention
BREAD Working Paper 489, August 2016. PDF.
Abstract: Comprehensive program evaluation requires capturing indirect effects of an intervention, such as changes in leaders' efforts and constituents' attitudes towards leaders. We study political economy responses to a large-scale development program in Bangladesh, in which 346 communities consisting of 16,600 households were randomly assigned subsidies for sanitation investments. When leaders' role in providing the program is not clear to constituents, treated constituents attribute credit for the randomly assigned program to their local leader, while leaders spend more time in treatment areas. In contrast, when benefit allocation is clearly and transparently random, there is no credit mis-attribution. Leaders attempt to both claim credit for the externally funded program and signal their ability by reacting, and the latter crowds in effort to the benefit of program non-beneficiaries. Constituents' sophisticated reactions to the program and to leaders' actions suggest that political accountability is not easily undermined by development aid.
Press coverage:
"Will Trump's name on stimulus checks help him win votes in November?", Washington Post "Monkey Cage", April 29, 2020. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/29/will-trumps-name-stimulus-checks-help-win-him-votes-november/