Vertical Linkages
At the heart of the study of political inequality are questions about when and how citizens can influence elites and vice versa. The cluster on vertical linkages tackles such questions with a focus specifically on the institutions that mediate these connections.
Developing Kampala's Citizen Charter: Citizen Deliberation and Bureaucratic Responsiveness in Service Provision
The politics of political inequality is poorly understood. There is certainly inequality in who participates in collective decision-making and in who influences collective decisions. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to measure political inequalities, how political inequalities affect wellbeing, and how best to address them. This project takes up these challenges in the context of a unique episode of citizen engagement in city governance in Kampala. We build on a partnership with the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) aimed at developing a “Citizen’s Charter”—a kind of social contract that specifies rights and expectations of citizens with respect to this authority. In the context of this consultative process, our project seeks to: (1) contribute to strengthening the behavioral measurement of inequalities in political influence, (2) assess whether and how participation in setting the rules can flatten inequalities in citizens’ willingness to take action to demand services, and to hold service providers to account, and (3) assess how the formalization of political rights and obligations can flatten these inequalities.
Type: Field experiment
Activities: (1) 188 small-scale citizen consultative meetings, where we randomize attendance to the meetings, as well as the type of meeting (led by KCCA staff or an outside discussion leader). In this arena, we measure both citizen and discussion leader preferences for Charter design; (2) baseline and endline survey about citizen preferences, political attitudes and behavior, trust, and pro-social inclinations; (3) bureaucratic audits where survey respondents are asked to serve as confederates and submit requests to the public authority.
Researchers: Constantin Manuel Bosancianu (WZB), Ana Garcia-Hernandez (WZB), Macartan Humphreys (WZB)
Timeline: July 2019 – ongoing.
Funding: International Growth Centre – Uganda, through the Cities initiative; Columbia University; WZB Berlin Social Science Centre, and a private foundation; .
Outputs: Report to KCCA on Charter design to be released soon. Working paper assessing input, throughput, and output inequality in the context of meetings to be released soon.
Partners: International Growth Centre (IGC) – Uganda; Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA); Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Uganda.
Media, brief: Promises and Pitfalls of Consultative Processes in Development
Political Accountability meta-analysis
In democratic settings, the most obvious micro-level channel for citizens to exercise political control of elites is by voting. Standard theories suggest that when voters learn of malfeasance by politicians they hold them to account; politicians in turn perform on the basis of their expectations of the ability of citizens to act in this way. To test this argument, Macartan Humphreys and Clara Bicalho (now UBC) teamed up with seven sets of researchers implementing parallel field experiments (“Metaketa I”) in study sites around the world to assess how voters respond on election day to new information about the under- (or over-) performance of their representatives. Implementing a pre-registered meta-analysis, they found scant evidence that voters are willing to update their view on politicians or to act on updated views when they do. Across all studies, non-performance-based concerns dominated, posing a fundamental challenge to the standard model of democratic accountability.
- The analytic work in the meta-analysis was led by Bicalho at WZB who co-authored a publication in Science Advances as well as book chapters in our edited volume with Cambridge University Press.
- The WZB team produced an interactive shiny app to let readers replicate and reanalyze major results.
Reseachers: Clara Bicalho (UBC), Macartan Humphreys (WZB)
Autonomous Control
Nina McMurry examined state-level institutional change, the decentralization of structures for decision-making as a way to move beyond zero-sum politics. In “From Recognition to Integration: Indigenous Autonomy, State Authority, and National Identity in the Philippines,” (APSR) McMurry asks how recognition of collective self-governance rights for indigenous communities affects national unity and state consolidation. In recent decades, many states have recognized such rights, devolving de jure control over land and local governance to indigenous institutions. Prominent perspectives in the state-building literature suggest that these policies are likely to threaten state consolidation by strengthening non-state authorities at the expense of state authority and subnational identities at the expense of a national identity. McMurry addresses this question head on by leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the granting of communal land titles to indigenous communities in the Philippines. Using difference-in-differences, panel data and survey experiments, she finds that contrary to received wisdom titling can increase both indigenous self-identification and compliance with the state.
Digital Citizenship
Lisa Garbe, Nina McMurry and Alex Scacco examined attempts by national bureaucracies to access information about citizens Governments across the Global South have begun introducing biometric IDs (eIDs) in an attempt to improve citizen-state legibility. While such initiatives can improve government efficiency, they also raise important questions about citizen privacy, especially for groups with a history of mistrust in the state. If concerns about increased legibility produce differential uptake or changes in political behavior, eID initiatives may exacerbate rather than dampen societal inequalities. In a conjoint experiment with 2,073 respondents from four Kenyan regions, they find meaningful group-level variation in support for specific policy features, and suggestive evidence that policies facilitating surveillance may discourage opposition political participation. Their most surprising finding, however, is that there is such broad support for expanded legibility. The promise of access to government services seems to outweigh other considerations.
Researchers: Lisa Garbe (WZB), Nina McMurry (Vanderbilt), Alex Scacco (WZB)
WZB working paper “Who Wants to be Legible? Digitalization and Intergroup Inequality in Kenya”
Does Political Voice Change Women’s Prosociality?: Evidence from a Lab in the Field Experiment in Uganda
In recent years, policy-makers across the world have implemented policies to increase the presence of underrepresented groups, like women, in decision making bodies. Evidence has shown that this can alter local political outcomes. Yet, studies may confound two mechanisms: a selection effect (the representation of different preferences) and an empowerment effect (the acquisition of political voice changes one’s behavior). To test for these effects, I conduct a modified public goods game over two categories of real community goods in rural Uganda. By exogenously assigning voting power over which good is chosen, I can directly test for the empowerment effect. The results suggest that having political voice in choosing the public good does not increase prosociality on average. Men are not sensitive to changes in political voice. However, women contribute significantly less after experiencing a negative shift in empowerment. The results present new evidence that changes in political influence may directly impact prosociality.
Researchers: Ana Garcia-Hernandez (WZB)
Status: Data was collected in Spring 2017, project completed in 2019.
Link to working paper
Wheels of Change: The Impact of Bicycles on Girls’ Education and Empowerment Outcomes in Zambia
We study the impact of a program that provides a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 2.5 km from the school. We randomized whether a girl receives a bicycle with a small cost to her family to cover replacement parts, a bicycle where these costs are covered by the program and so is zero cost to the family or a control group. We find that the bicycle reduced average commuting time to school by 35%, decreased absenteeism by 27%, improved math test scores and led to girls expressing higher feelings of control over their lives. We also find evidence that girls who received bicycles with the small cost to her family had higher levels of aspirations, self-image and a desire to delay marriage and pregnancy, possibly due to the girls perceiving the payment from the family as a desire to increase future investment in her. We do not find any impacts on a school dropout and grade transition. Heterogeneity analysis by distance to school shows an inverted u-shape for most of the schooling and empowerment results, suggesting that impacts are greatest for girls that live far, but not too far, from school. This also suggests that empowerment outcomes worked through schooling effects.
Researchers: Nathan Fiala (UConnecticut), Ana Garcia-Hernandez (WZB), Kritika Narula (Yale), Nishith Prakash (UConnecticut)
Funding: WBR and UBS Bank
Status: Data was collected between August 2017 and December 2018. Administrative data was collected in 2019 and 2020.
Link to policy brief
Link to project webpage
Partners: World Bicycle Relief (WBR) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Networks and the Size of the Gender Gap in Politician Performance across Job Duties
The share of women in legislatures has increased dramatically in the past decade. Yet female politicians continue to face barriers that undermine their performance relative to men. We argue that those barriers have different implications across job duties, which can result in performance gender gaps of different magnitudes across duties. In particular, where female politicians are excluded in politician networks, duties requiring interaction with fellow politicians (e.g., legislative activities) may exhibit larger gender gaps as compared to duties (e.g., constituency services) that can be undertaken independently. We find support for this argument when comparing women and men politicians’ performance across 50 subnational Ugandan legislatures (where 1/3 of seats are reserved for women). Using original network data, we find that women are significantly more peripheral in professional networks, and that this network peripherality drives gender gaps in duties requiring more interaction with fellow politicians, but not independently-performed duties.
Researchers: Ana Garcia-Hernandez (WZB), Guy Grossman (UPenn), Kristin Michelitch (Vanderbilt)
Status: Paper published.
Link to working paper
When Do Strong Parties "Throw the Bums Out? Competition and Accountability in South African Candidate Nominations"
How do party elites make decisions about which candidates to nominate? Existing accounts suggest that, in party systems with centralized nominations and strong party brands, party elites prioritize internal party concerns over constituent interests, with negative repercussions for democratic accountability. This project evaluate this claim in South Africa, using data on the careers of more than 8,000 local councillors linked with constituency-level data on public opinion and public service provision. We find that citizen approval predicts incumbent renomination and promotion, but only in electorally competitive constituencies. By contrast, improvements in service provision do not predict career advancement. Our findings suggest that South Africa’s strong parties are responsive to constituent views, but that party-led accountability may not incentivize better public services.
Researcher: Nina McMurry with Evan Lieberman and Philip Martin
Status: Published in Studies in Comparative International Development
“From Recognition to Integration: Indigenous Autonomy, State Authority, and National Identity in the Philippines"
This project examines the decentralization of state-level structures for decision-making as a way to move beyond zero-sum politics. Here, Nina McMurry asks how recognition of collective self-governance rights for indigenous communities affects national unity and state consolidation. In recent decades, many states have recognized such rights, devolving de jure control over land and local governance to indigenous institutions. Prominent perspectives in the state-building literature suggest that these policies are likely to threaten state consolidation by strengthening non-state authorities at the expense of state authority and subnational identities at the expense of a national identity. Leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the granting of communal land titles to indigenous communities in the Philippines, McMurry finds that titling can increase both indigenous self-identification and compliance with the state.
Researcher: Nina McMurry
Status: Published in the American Political Science Review