Links I liked






What works in promoting governance reform in low income countries?


An anti-corruption campaign in Rwanda, via This is Africa











Fall 2015 conference highlights

The omnibus conference blog post has returned!  Loads of interesting papers to report on from this fall.

indexMelissa Dell, Nathan Lane, and Pablo Querubin. “State Capacity, Local Governance, and Economic Development in Vietnam.” Presented at the Berkeley Center for Economics and Politics.

Abstract: There has been a large divergence in economic prosperity between Northeast and Southeast Asia since the mid-20th century, and the governance organizations and norms of Asian societies plausibly help explain this divergence. This study examines the impacts of dierent historical governance norms on development using Vietnam as a laboratory. Northern Vietnam (Dai Viet) was ruled by a bureaucratic state inherited from China. It governed through a centralized, competitively selected bureaucracy, and the village was the fundamental administrative unit. Southern Vietnam was a peripheral tributary of the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire. It followed a patron-client model with weaker, more personalized power relations and no village intermediation. The Khmer region was not brought under Vietnam’s control until just prior to French colonization. We use a regression discontinuity design across the Dai Viet-Khmer boundary to compare villages that had a bureaucratic state to nearby areas that had a patron-client state. We find that areas historically under the bureaucratic state have higher living standards today. Using rich data from South Vietnam and the unied Socialist Republic of Vietnam, we document that in villages with a bureaucratic historical state, citizens have been better able to organize for public goods and redistribution through stronger local governments and civil society. However, today foreign companies are less likely to invest in historically bureaucratic areas, which have a long history of being relatively closed towards outsiders. Overall the study suggests that the bureaucratic state in East Asia – deeply embedded in civil society – played a central role in this region’s growth.
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Christopher Blattman, Julian Jamison, and Margaret Sheridan. “Reducing Crime and Violence: Experimental Evidence on Adult Noncognitive Investments in Liberia.”  Presented at the Berkeley comparative politics colloquium.
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Abstract: We show self control and self image are malleable in adults, and that investments in them reduce crime and violence. We recruited criminally-engaged Liberian men and randomized half to eight weeks of group cognitive behavioral therapy, teaching self control skills and a noncriminal self-image. We also randomized $200 grants. Cash raised incomes and reduced crime in the short-run but effects dissipated within a year. Therapy increased self control and noncriminal values, and acts of crime and violence fell 20–50%. Therapy’s impacts lasted at least a year when followed by cash, likely because cash reinforced behavioral changes via prolonged practice.
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Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, James Robinson, and Jonathan Weigel.  “The Evolution of Culture and Institutions: Evidence from the Kuba Kingdom.”  Presented at the Berkeley comparative politics colloquium.
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Abstract: We use variation in historical state centralization to examine the impact of institutions on cultural norms. The Kuba Kingdom, established in Central Africa in the early 17th century by King Shyaam, had more developed state institutions than the other independent villages and chieftaincies in the region. It had an unwritten constitution, separation of political powers, a judicial system with courts and juries, a police force and military, taxation, and significant public goods provision. Comparing individuals from the Kuba Kingdom to those from just outside the Kingdom, we find that centralized formal institutions are associated with weaker norms of rule-following and a greater propensity to cheat for material gain.
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Abstract: What accounts for political violence in competitive electoral regimes? Why do elites instigate violence, and how does it aect voting behavior? Most theories of elite-instigated political violence make a crucial yet untested assumption: that if politicians employ violence as a tactic, then it must accord them some objective strategic benefit. Employing experimental and qualitative survey and interview data from Kenya, I argue that, in fact, violence is often the result of strategic miscalculation on the part of elites. In particular, I nd that politicians overestimate the electoral benets of violence and more crucially underestimate its costs, particularly with respect to their core voters. The same is true of heated ethnic rhetoric, which I show to be ineffective in garnering coethnic support yet an important predictor of future violence. The results highlight an important yet overlooked explanation for political violence in competitive electoral regimes and raise thought-provoking questions about when and why office-seeking politicians fail to accurately infer voter preferences over salient political issues.
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Abstract: The Islamic insurgency in the Sahel followed different trajectories and led to varying outcomes: in Mali a powerful Islamic insurgency emerged and lead to the collapse of the state whereas in Mauritania the state was able to defeat the insurgency, and in Niger no cells of Islamic insurgents emerged at all. This variation of trajectories and outcomes constitutes the puzzle of this paper. The paper makes three major claims: first, the root causes of the Islamic insurgency in the Sahel can be traced in the sociopolitical and religious transformations that resulted from the democratization process (1990-2012). Second, after 20 years of democratization, the growing discontent vis-à-vis the state combined with a rising religiosity and ethno-racial tensions created a fertile ground for the incidence of Islamic insurgency in all of Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Yet Islamic insurgency emerged only in Mali and Mauritania where greater political and strategic opportunities incentivized jihadist leaders to frame a discourse that collectivized the grievance of the masses. Success of the insurgency in Mali and its failure in Mauritania were determined by the level of popular support and the state repressive capacity in each of those two countries. Third, state capacity, particularly repressive capacity, is to a greater extend the determinant of the onset as well as the success of an Islamic insurgency.
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Alexandra Minnis, Evan vanDommelen-Gonzalez, Ellen Luecke, William Dow, Sergio Bautista-Arredondo, and Nancy Padian.  “Yo Puedo – a conditional cash transfer and life skills intervention to promote adolescent sexual health.”  Presented at the Berkeley Population Center.
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Abstract: We designed and evaluated for feasibility an intervention – Yo Puedo – that addresses social network influences and socioeconomic opportunities in a neighborhood with substantial gang exposure and early childbearing.  Yo Puedo combined conditional cash transfers for completion of educational and reproductive health wellness goals with life skills sessions, and targeted youth 16 to 21 years old and same-aged members of their social network. We conducted a 2-arm study with social networks randomized to the intervention or a standard services control arm. We evaluated intervention uptake, adherence and safety; and assessed evidence of effects on behavioral outcomes associated with unintended pregnancy and STI risk.  Seventy-two social networks comprised of 162 youth enrolled, with 92% retention over six months. Seventy-two percent of youth randomized to the intervention participated in intervention activities: 53% received at least one CCT payment; and 66% came to at least one life skills session. We found no evidence that cash payments financed illicit or high-risk behavior. At six months, intervention participants, compared to controls, had a lower odds of hanging out on the street frequently (OR = 0.54, p = 0.10) and a lower odds of reporting their close friends had been incarcerated (OR = 0.6, p=0.12). They reported less regular alcohol use (OR = 0.54, p=0.04) and a lower odds of having sex (OR = 0.50, p = 0.04).  The feasibility evaluation of Yo Puedo demonstrated its promise; a larger evaluation of effects on pregnancy and sustained behavioral changes is warranted.
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Abstract: Property rights are important for economic exchange, but in much of the world they are not publicly provided. Private market organizations can fill this gap by providing an institutional structure to enforce agreements, but with this power comes the ability to extort from the group’s members. Under what circumstances will private organizations provide a stable environment for economic activity? Using original survey data collected from 1,900 randomly sampled traders across 292 markets, 68 market leaders, and 55 government revenue collectors across 57 local governments in Lagos, Nigeria, along with market case studies, I find that strong markets maintain sophisticated institutions to support trade not in the absence of government, but rather as a response to active interference. I argue that market organizations develop and enforce pro-trade institutions when threatened by politicians they perceive as predatory, and when the organization can respond with threats of its own. Under such a balance of power, the organization will not extort because it needs the support of the traders it represents in order to keep threats credible.
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Abstract: Both Benin and Ghana are amongst Africa’s most celebrated examples of democratic success, but there is growing divergence in the capacity of their state institutions to act as effective agents of development. Why? This dissertation argues that modes of party financing are integral to understanding patterns of patronage-based recruitment to public office, and that these patronage practices have consequences for the broader developmental capacities of the state.  The first part of the dissertation shows that leaders use political patronage not only as a means of “buying” votes, but more fundamentally as a means of exerting control over the state’s resources. How leaders choose to access and control these resources depends on the size of the private sector and the strength of party organizations, both of which vary considerably across African countries. Where party organizations are strong and the private sector large, patronage is likely to be concentrated primarily at the elite level to facilitate the exchange of contracts for financial support to the party [as seen in Ghana]. Conversely, where private capital is more scarce, leaders will concentrate patronage at the public service level, enabling political supporters to access state revenue and rents for their party [as seen in Benin].  These varying patronage practices have consequences for the broader developmental capacities of the state. Elite level patronage leads to more stability and cohesion in the executive which, among other things, strengthens commitment to development programs over time even in the face of serious implementation challenges. High levels of public service patronage, by contrast, heighten organizational problems including technical deficiencies amongst public personnel, the frequent disappearance of state resources for political use and excessive control over bureaucratic agencies. This latter environment is particularly challenging for the implementation of development programs.
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More books on development for the interested generalist

