The Impact of Social Accountability on Service Delivery: Experimental Evidence from a Large-scale Community-driven Development Program in Uganda

This pre-analysis plan is for an experimental intervention designed to evaluate the impact of a social accountability program on service delivery in Uganda. A fast growing body of literature shows how corruption can undermine development by generating costs for society. The Transparency, Accountability and Anti-Corruption (TAAC) component of a large development program in northern Uganda was implemented by local NGOs under the oversight of the Inspectorate of Government (IG) and consists of both preventive and punitive anti-corruption measures. The TAAC component is innovative as it mainstreams an anti-corruption prevention intervention in a Community Driven Development (CDD) project. The impact evaluation assesses the relative effectiveness of a range of social accountability interventions being scaled up across the north of the country as part of the TAAC component. It provides a unique opportunity to assess how best to design social accountability interventions, in particular, the optimal intensity of such interventions and the role of incentives for communities to report fraud and deliver quality projects. The TAAC impact evaluation will document which (if any) social accountability model is the most cost-effective way to reduce corruption. As such, the results will provide information to the international community on how best to expand and scale-up anti-corruption activities in other national programs. The impact evaluation of the TAAC component is unique given its focus on a large-scale government-led intervention implemented in collaboration with local NGOs throughout Northern Uganda.