Refugees, International Aid, and Local Service Provision in Jordan

• In Event: The Local Politics of Service Provision in the Middle East and North Africa (Pre-Recorded)

Abstract

How do refugee crises affect local officials’ ability to govern and provide services? Why, despite the perceived negative effects of refugees, do some municipalities with refugees struggle to provide services while others flourish? These questions are increasingly relevant in the Middle East, where clientelism and local elite capture of state resources have hindered service provision and where refugees have been cast as pushing already-weak systems to breaking points. In my paper, I examine the effects of the Syrian refugee crisis and accompanying inflows of international aid on municipal service provision in Jordan—a country where service provision has suffered from elite extraction and a bloated public sector. Using an original municipal-level dataset based on government budgetary and census data and 50 interviews from five months of fieldwork in Jordan from 2018-2020, this study finds that municipalities’ existing distributive ties with the central state and local officials’ direct relationships with international organizations shape whether refugee crises will positively or negatively impact local service provision. Where local elected officials have weaker ties with the central state and work directly with international organizations, assistance to mitigate the service effects of refugees may improve service provision for host communities as well. This paper contributes to a growing literature on both the effects of refugee crises and how service provision dynamics can shift in clientelist contexts as a result of external shocks.

Author

• Reva Dhingra, Harvard University