Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP14537
Authors: Katharine Baldwin; Dean Karlan; Christopher Udry; Ernest Appiah
Abstract: Participatory development is designed to mitigate problems of political bias in pre-existing localgovernment but also interacts with it in complex ways. Using a five-year randomized controlledstudy in 97 clusters of villages (194 villages) in Ghana, we analyze the effects of a majorparticipatory development program on participation in, leadership of and investment by preexistingpolitical institutions, and on households’ overall socioeconomic well-being. Applyingtheoretical insights on political participation and redistributive politics, we consider thepossibility of both cross-institutional mobilization and displacement, and heterogeneous effectsby partisanship. We find the government and its political supporters acted with high expectationsfor the participatory approach: treatment led to increased participation in local governance andreallocation of resources. But the results did not meet expectations, resulting in a worsening ofsocioeconomic wellbeing in treatment versus control villages for government supporters. Thisdemonstrates international aid’s complex distributional consequences.
Keywords: participatory development; political economy; international aid; distributive politics
JEL Codes: H4; H7; O12; O17; O19
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Participatory development program (O20) | Increased participation in local governance (H79) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | Worsening of socioeconomic wellbeing for government supporters (I31) |
| Increased participation in local governance (H79) | Worsening of socioeconomic wellbeing for government supporters (I31) |