Transparency and Accountability Programs: Transformative, or Irrelevant?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Why do international development programs that encourage transparency and accountability or social accountability sometimes dramatically improve public services and sometimes have little or no effect? This panel brings together an international group of scholars who have conducted randomized evaluations of transparency and accountability programs that all sought to improve a specific public service—maternal and child health care—in four geographically, politically, and socioeconomically diverse countries: Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda. Their studies, like the broader field of research and practice around programs like these, have reached mixed conclusions: some find enormous effects on welfare outcomes; others small or null effects. After briefly introducing each study and its conclusions, panelists will use data and findings from these evaluations, as well as insights from their experiences conducting them, to reflect on the mechanisms and contextual factors underlying these varied effects. The goal of the discussion will be to arrive at an initial understanding of why studies of transparency and accountability programs have such diverse effects.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries

Chair

• Archon Fung Harvard University

Presenters

• Stephen Kosack University of Washington

• Martina Björkman Nyqvist Stockholm School of Economics

• Pia Raffler Harvard University

• Darin Christensen UCLA