Working Paper: NBER ID: w26930
Authors: Kate Baldwin; Dean Karlan; Christopher R. Udry; Ernest Appiah
Abstract: Participatory development is designed to mitigate problems of political bias in pre-existing local government but also interacts with it in complex ways. Using a five-year randomized controlled study in 97 clusters of villages (194 villages) in Ghana, we analyze the effects of a major participatory development program on participation in, leadership of and investment by preexisting political institutions, and on households’ overall socioeconomic well-being. Applying theoretical insights on political participation and redistributive politics, we consider the possibility of both cross-institutional mobilization and displacement, and heterogeneous effects by partisanship. We find the government and its political supporters acted with high expectations for the participatory approach: treatment led to increased participation in local governance and reallocation of resources. But the results did not meet expectations, resulting in a worsening of socioeconomic wellbeing in treatment versus control villages for government supporters. This demonstrates international aid’s complex distributional consequences.
Keywords: international aid; participatory development; political institutions; Ghana; socioeconomic wellbeing
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) | Increase in participation in local governance for government supporters (D72) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | Decrease in participation for non-NDC households (D19) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | No significant change in perceptions of accountability of district assembly members (D79) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | Decrease in voter turnout (K16) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | Decrease in voter turnout in NDC-affiliated villages (K16) |
| Participatory development program (O20) | Increase in candidates running for office (D79) |