Learning accountability: Can formal education help hold politicians to account?

2017-07-04

2017-07-29

Voter beliefs about incumbent and challenger performance in office, political knowledge, comprehension of politician performance information, vote choice, costly indications of candidate support.

We will examine changes in the main outcomes (both post-treatment and post-election) relative to baselines, and examine individual indicators and indexes for groups of similar outcomes.

To identify the interaction between education and information provision we combine natural variation with a randomized controlled trial. First, we leverage variation in school construction to identify the effects of access to education using a difference-in-differences (and instrumental variables) design that compares cohorts just too old to be affected by the reforms to cohorts affected by the reforms in villages that were and were not close to locations where new secondary schools were constructed. Second, we randomize the provision of incumbent performance information to individuals in those cohorts and villages. In addition, we compare the effects of just informing voters about their current incumbent with also providing a temporal benchmark---the performance of a previous incumbent. To further probe the conditions required to process and incorporate such information in voting decisions, we further vary whether voters are informed of the duties of their deputies. We conduct a panel survey to measure the pre-treatment effects of education, the effects of different types of information provision, and interaction between education and information provision on electoral accountability and several costly behavioral outcomes. A variety of treatment variants and survey questions help us to separate between the mechanisms potentially driving our main hypotheses relating to the effects of education, information provision, and their potential complementarity or substitutability on electoral accountability.

By computer in private.

Information treatments (randomized): village.

Education access (natural variation): village-cohort.

Yes

450 villages.

Around 4050 respondents (seek 9 per village).

Information treatments (randomized): 75 control villages; 75 deputy duties information villages; 75 incumbent performance villages; 75 incumbent performance + deputy duties information villages; 75 benchmarked incumbent performance villages; 75 benchmarked incumbent performance + deputy duties information villages.

Education treatment (natural variation): 225 low education reform intensity villages; 225 high education reform intensity villages. Within these villages, 1/3 of respondents will be fully affected by the reform, 1/3 partially affected by the reform; and 1/3 unaffected by the reform.

Pre-analysis Plan (updated to include endline survey)

Pre-analysis Plan

Political accountability may be constrained by the reach and relevance of information campaigns in developing democracies and—upon receiving information—voters' ability and will to hold politicians accountable. To illuminate voter-level constraints and information relevance absent dissemination constraints, we conducted a field experiment around Senegal's 2017 parliamentary elections to examine the core theoretical steps linking receiving different types of incumbent performance information to electoral and nonelectoral accountability. Voters immediately processed information as Bayesians, found temporally benchmarked local performance outcomes particularly informative, and updated their beliefs for at least a month. Learning that incumbents generally performed better than expected, voters durably requested greater politician contact after elections while incumbent vote choice increased among likely voters and voters prioritizing local projects when appraising incumbents. In contrast, information about incumbent duties did not systematically influence beliefs or accountability. These findings suggest voters were able and mostly willing to use relevant information to hold politicians to account.

Bhandari, Abhit, Horacio Larreguy, and John Marshall. "Able and Mostly Willing: An Empirical Anatomy of Information's Effect on Voter-Driven Accountability in Senegal." Forthcoming, American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12591

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12591