Information Barriers to Public Service Delivery: Innovations in Strengthening Local Political Accountability in Uganda

There is a wide agreement among scholars of African politics that politicians feel little electoral pressure to improve vital public goods and social services. The prevalence of clientelism, ethnic voting and faulty elections are commonly held as the main culprits. Our research project focuses instead on two alternative barriers that weaken democratic accountability across Africa: (1) acute lack of politician performance information in the hands of citizens, which renders citizens ethnic or clientelistic voters; and (2) lack of information in the hands of politicians about service deficiencies in their constituency, which reduces their ability to monitor and sanction service providers. In collaboration with a leading Ugandan NGO – Advocates Coalition for Democracy and the Environment (ACODE) – IPA associated Principal Investigators Guy Grossman and Kristin Michelitch have designed two interventions to directly address these informational barriers: (1) a widespread dissemination of information regarding the performance of local government councilors' to citizens, and (2) opening a new channel of communication from citizens to local government councilors to report public service deficiencies via an innovative text message technology.

Through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) method, the research team is studying the extent to which those two interventions impact the behavior of voters and politicians, and ultimately the provision of public services, such as health and education. Our research design involves a panel survey of citizens, local councilors, and public service providers, pre and post-intervention implementation. This study has clear theoretical and policy implications. Theoretically, it will contribute to the growing micro-foundational body of work on political accountability in low-income countries with weak democratic institutions. Specifically it brings together and improves upon the largely disjointed literatures on political accountability and public service provision. From a policy perspective, the project will generate useful knowledge about the effectiveness of new innovations to improve the provision of education and health services to marginalized populations. More so, this study breaks new ground in the utilization of recent information technology innovations to affect politicians-constituents relations.