Can Public Information Campaigns on Aid Projects Improve Social Cohesion?

• In Event: Attitudes towards, and Support for, Democracy: Global Perspectives

Abstract

Prior research shows that the beneficiaries of foreign aid often lack basic information on development projects in their communities---in terms of the initiators of the interventions or the rationale of aid distribution. This lack of transparency can undermine citizens' political efficacy and nurture perceptions of unfair aid distribution. Moreover, a lack of information on funding sources and allocation mechanisms allows local elites to claim credit and manipulate local aid projects.
Customized aid information campaigns may avert these effects and impact positively on state-society and inter-group relations. We aim to investigate these potential effects of information in a randomized controlled trial among 10,000 respondents of a three-wave panel survey in Mali and Niger. We focus on ongoing community-based infrastructure projects co-funded by the German government.
In the baseline wave, members of the treatment group will receive customized information on ongoing aid projects in their vicinity (e.g., type, volume, and formal rules of project selection). In the mid-line, we repeat this information. In addition, half of the treatment group will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the project to the government and responsible aid agency. In the end line, we estimate the effects of these two elements of the information campaign on peoples’ evaluation of political efficacy, distributional fairness, engagement with political institutions and inter-group relations. This pre-analysis plan describes our hypotheses, research design and planned data collection.

Authors

• Carlo Koos, University of Bergen

• Alexander De Juan, Osnabrück University