"Can you hear me now?": Experimental evidence on improving public service delivery through non-electoral citizen participation

Last registered on July 11, 2025

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011478

Initial registration date

June 07, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

June 15, 2023, 4:04 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

July 11, 2025, 2:32 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Pakistan

Region

Punjab

Primary Investigator

Name

Tiffany Simon

Affiliation

Princeton University

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Asim Khwaja

PI Affiliation

Harvard

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Saher Asad

PI Affiliation

World Bank

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2024-12-16

End date

2026-01-30

Keywords

Education, Gender, Governance

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We examine how citizens can hold policy actors accountable for public service delivery. We do so through a randomized control trial that introduces community-based mobilization interventions to improve public schooling in Pakistan. Based on our pilot, we vary these interventions by: (i) policy actor type – whether citizens approach a bureaucrat directly or exert pressure through a political route and (ii) citizen gender – whether the citizens participating are women or men. In addition, for each we also include a variation in which citizens’ interaction with the policy actor is more directly supported and facilitated by an NGO. We examine impacts on citizen political action, resolution of school issue, and school quality.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Asad, Saher, Asim Khwaja and Tiffany Simon. 2025. ""Can you hear me now?": Experimental evidence on improving public service delivery through non-electoral citizen participation." AEA RCT Registry. July 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11478-3.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We will evaluate the impact of a series of four community meetings led by trained social organizers from the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP). These meetings help overcome both the informational and coordination constraints preventing citizens from engaging with government actors regarding policy preferences, and serve to mobilize women and men through structured activities that encourage them to identify a problem in their local public primary school, and construct and deliver a message regarding this issue to a policy actor. Our treatment will vary across the following dimensions:

Actor Type. In the politician version of the treatment, citizens will be provided with information about electoral accountability, the political system, and the contact details of their assembly member. In the bureaucrat version of the treatment, citizens will be provided with information about the education bureaucracy and the contact details of the relevant education bureaucrat.

Participant Gender. Our pilot work has revealed that women are more informed about education issues than men, but face greater obstacles in engaging with policy actors. Since our intervention helps with both informational and access constraints, we will test our intervention separately with community meetings along gender lines -- either all men or all women -- which will allow us to examine which of the two groups show greater impact.

Meeting facilitation. Based on our pilot studies, the impact of the community mobilization interventions may be enhanced if there is more explicit and observed support by socially motivated and relatively well-connected outside actors. Our implementing partner, NRSP, is one such actor. We test a facilitated version of our interventions where NRSP directly works with the local communities in constructing their message and accompanies them in the delivery of the message to the relevant policy actor. This may help citizens overcome a sense of low efficacy or fear of retribution from policy actors.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-01-11

Intervention End Date

2025-06-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Citizen action on their education problem, problem resolution

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

We will randomize treatment -- holding of community meetings -- at the village level. Within each district, randomization is stratified by the gender of the school in the village (boys' government primary school or girls' government primary school), such that our sample has an equal number of villages with boys' schools and villages with girls' schools. Within each strata in each district, we randomly assign:
- 1/3 of villages to pure control
- 1/12 villages to female participants-politician policy actor-facilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to female participants-politician policy actor-unfacilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to female participants-bureaucrat policy actor-facilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to female participants-bureaucrat policy actor-unfacilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to male participants-politician policy actor-facilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to male participants-politician policy actor-unfacilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to male participants-politician policy actor-facilitated treatment
- 1/12 villages to male participants-politician policy actor-unfacilitated treatment

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

Village

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

433 villages

Sample size: planned number of observations

6,500 villagers; 1 observation pre-treatment, 2 observations post-treatment

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

145 villages control, 36 male/unfacilitated, 36 male/facilitated, 36 female/facilitated, 36 female/unfacilitated, 36 politician/unfacilitated, 36 politician/facilitated, 36 bureaucrat/unfacilitated, 36 politician/facilitated

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB