Electoral incentives for public good provision: Evidence from three linked field experiments in Liberia

• In Event: The politics of education in developing countries

Proposal

Democracy, in theory, allows voters to hold politicians accountable for providing growth-inducing public goods which are undersupplied by the market, such as education. But there is very little empirical evidence on whether and when there are direct electoral rewards for public good provision -- and the persistence of poor-quality public goods in many democracies implies the existence of nontrivial obstacles to this kind of accountability. We provide the first experimental measure of the impact of improved schools on electoral outcomes, leveraging the geographically randomized pilot of a public-private school partnership in Liberia. The policy caused an increase in voter registration and vote share for incumbent representatives, especially those from the ruling party. Electoral gains were concentrated in places where test score gains were largest, suggesting that voters perceive and reward school quality. We then examine informational and institutional obstacles to accountability, using two additional experiments that randomly vary information to politicians and households, respectively. Politicians who were informed about the school policy's impact were twice as likely to support it in public debates broadcast by radio in their district. Households who were informed of candidates' positions on the policy were more likely to support candidates who favored the policy, especially in districts where elections were competitive. Taken together, our results show that even in a consolidating democracy, politician and voter behavior is consistent with a model of electoral accountability for public goods, and that competitive elections and richer information have the potential to further align politicians with voters' preferences.

Authors

• Wayne Sandholtz, University of California, San Diego

• Justin Sandefur, Center for Global Development

• Mauricio Romero, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM)