This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The goal of this project is to explore the link between public demand for and elected officials? supply of efficient, responsive government. In particular, it examines three distinct mechanisms for mobilizing grassroots pressure for good government, and tests the explanatory power of each mechanism through a field experiment in Indonesia. The first is a rights mechanism, which claims citizens will hold politicians accountable when they have a clear understanding of their entitlement to government-provided goods and services. In many new democracies, even this basic knowledge is fragile. The second is a taxpayer mechanism, which suggests citizens will only take action when they make fiscal contributions to government. Since many developing country governments collect only informal fees, taxes and bribes, the challenge is to encourage citizens to see themselves more as creditors than debtors to government. The third mechanism centers on capacity and highlights the importance not of strengthening the motivation but rather the ability to scrutinize by enhancing citizens? proficiency in basic budgeting and public finance issues.
To test which mechanism has the most explanatory power, the researcher will partner with PATTIRO, an Indonesian advocacy organization, to conduct an information campaign with content that distinctly reflects the rights, taxpayer and capacity mechanisms. Individuals and villages will be selected to receive the information randomly. Similar to a clinical drug trial, random selection creates a 'treatment' group and a 'control' group that are identical in all key characteristics at the outset. Any difference in outcomes across both groups following the campaign can then solely be attributed to the impact of the campaign itself. The impact of each mechanism on individual attitudes and behavior toward accountability will be measured using a before and after survey of 1600 individuals sampled from both treatment and control groups.
By identifying the individual level determinants of empowerment, this study will locate the origins of grassroots pressure for public goods and better government in developing countries. This project should be of interest not only to researchers seeking to understand when citizens hold elected officials accountable but also to the numerous development organizations interested in the most effective strategies for empowering the marginalized and politically disadvantaged.
