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Do well-informed politicians make more effective spending decisions? In experiments with 70% of all elected politicians in Malawi ($ N=460 $), we tested the effects of information on public spending. Specifically, we randomly provided information about school needs, foreign aid, and voting patterns prior to officials making real decisions about the allocation of spending. We show that these information interventions reduced inequalities in spending: treatment group politicians were more likely to spend in schools neglected by donors and in schools with greater need. Some information treatment effects were strongest in remote and less populated communities. These results suggest that information gaps partially explain inequalities in spending allocation and imply social welfare benefits from improving politicians' access to information about community needs.

AbstractCorruption is widespread in many developing countries, though public officials' discretion in the solicitation of bribes may expose some citizens to more corruption than others. We derive expectations about how shared ethnicity between government officials and citizens should influence the likelihood of bribe solicitation. We evaluate these expectations through a field experiment in which Malawian confederates seek electricity connections from real government offices – an interaction that is often accompanied by bribe solicitation. Our field experiment exogenously varied coethnicity between the official and the confederate. We find that coethnicity increases the likelihood of expediting an electricity connection, both with and without a bribe, which we interpret as evidence of parochial corruption.

State capacity may be a crucial factor conditioning the democratizing power of elections in authoritarian regimes. This paper develops a two-phase theory considers the different effects of state capacity on turnover in elections and democratic change after elections. In regimes with limited state capacity, manipulating elections and repressing opposition is more difficult than in regimes with extensive state capacity, rendering turnover in elections more likely in weak states. However, if the new incumbent has limited capacity to deliver public services and make policy changes after coming to power, sustainable democratic change is unlikely. Hence, state capacity is hypothesized to have a negative effect on turnover, but a positive effect on democratic change. These hypotheses are confirmed in a sample of 460 elections in 110 authoritarian regimes taking place in the period 1974 to 2012 using the Varieties of Democracy dataset. The findings suggest a need to revisit strong-state-first theories of democratization.

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. ; The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12450 ; Motivation. Whether public sector organizations implement programmes successfully is a key concern of development scholars and practitioners across the world. While many studies purport a link between social accountability and public sector performance, this relationship has been difficult to study empirically. Purpose. This article examines whether bureaucrats anticipate that public sector programmes with information-sharing mechanisms, including visibility, transparency and collaboration, will be successful in terms of effectiveness and limiting corruption. Approach and Methods. The paper uses a conjoint survey experiment administered to thousands of bureaucrats across three African countries: Ghana, Malawi and Uganda. By asking bureaucrats - those with insider knowledge of government programme operations-about two hypothetical programmes with randomly assigned characteristics, we examine whether bureaucrats associate opportunities for monitoring by citizens and civil society groups with the success of public sector programmes.Findings. Across diverse country and organizational contexts, bureaucrats consistently attribute high probabilities of success to programmes that are visible to the public, transparent in their implementation, and open to collaboration with civil society. Moreover, the inclusion of any one of these information-sharing mechanisms can independently increase the perceived likelihood of success. The findings hold across institutional contexts and diverse subgroups of bureaucrats surveyed. Policy Implications. To promote success in the implementation of public sector development programmes , officials should look for ways to increase the visibility of their programmes , set requirements for frequent public updates on programme progress, and build in opportunities for outside groups to collaborate. ; This project is supported by the UK Department for International Development Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) program, PI's: Jan Meyer Sahling and Christian Schuster

Does foreign aid shift public spending? Many worry that aid will be "fungible" in the sense that govern- ments reallocate public funds in response to aid. If so, this could undermine development, increase the poorest's dependency on donors, and free resources for patronage. Yet, there is little agreement about the scale or consequences of such effects. We conducted an experiment with 460 elected politicians in Malawi. We provided information about foreign aid projects in local schools to these politicians. After- wards, politicians made real decisions about which schools to target with development goods. Politicians who received the aid information treatment were 18% less likely to target schools with existing aid. These effects increase to 22-29% when the information was plausibly novel. We find little evidence that aid information heightens targeting of political supporters or family members, or dampens support to the neediest. Instead the evidence indicates politicians allocate the development goods in line with equity concerns.