GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT: BASIC SERVICES AND RESPONSES TO INFECTIOUS DISEASE What explains some of the wide disparities in basic service provision to people in low- and middle-income countries? In particular, in the face of common technologies for preventing and treating various infectious diseases, why are such different policies enacted and implemented? During 2008-10, I carried out research with several undergraduate and graduate students from Princeton and Rhodes University (South Africa) to learn about the governance of HIV/AIDS, other infectious diseases, and other development challenges at the local level in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. Because so little is known about the configurations of governance, most of this work has been explicitly exploratory. Our research included a mix of in-depth interviews with local councilors, and a range of relevant political actors and service providers; a pen-and-paper survey of local councilors; and the collection of a range of government documents, reports, news articles, and relevant datasets. One important finding was the identification of substantial pathologies associated with multi-level governance – or what Ostrom and others have referred to as “polycentric governance” -- for accountability and efficiency. Also based on that research, I have recently published a paper on the determinants of local councilor political commitment to HIV/AIDS. Additional information about my work on the Governance of Infectious Disease (GID) can be found here. In future research, I hope to explore the effects of alternative framings of information campaigns on the risk perceptions and policy prioritization of citizens and local leaders. In related research, I have been gathering time-varying and geo-coded data on local service provision in Southern Africa to test a series of hypotheses concerning the determinants of effective democratic governance. This work aims to estimate the effects of both long-term influences that have shaped differential patterns of development, and shorter term reform initiatives and patterns of political competition. Over the next several years, I will be incorporating what I learn from these studies into a book manuscript on the politics of governance for human development. ETHNIC POLITICS: VIOLENCE, PROSPERITY, AND POLICY PREFERENCES Along with Prerna Singh (Harvard University), I have been exploring the consequences of “institutionalized ethnic categories.” As an alternative approach to extant work that conceptualizes ethnic relations in demographic, attitudinal or behavioral terms, we have focused on how the state’s use of particular ethnic categories – or its choice to avoid categorization altogether – structures patterns of political competition. In a paper that considers the consequences of ethnic institutions in 11 Southern African cases, we find that our approach goes a long way towards explaining variation in the outbreaks of ethnic civil war. We are working towards completion of a large-scale study of the consequences of ethnic enumeration on the census and other forms of categorization by the state on violence and prosperity around the world for the past half-century. In a separate study, Gwyneth McClendon (Princeton University) and I have considered the role of ethnicity in shaping individual preferences for public policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a wide range of analyses of Afrobarometer survey data, we find a consistent link, suggesting that this may be an important mechanism explaining the strong findings between ethnic diversity and the under-provision of good policies around the world. At the very least, our findings seriously challenge recent studies that have posited that tastes and policy preferences are unrelated to ethnic differences within countries. And in new research, Yarrow Dunham (UC Merced/Princeton) and I are exploring the ways in which social identity may shape risk perceptions and policy priorities. Through the use of randomized survey experiments, we are testing a series of hypotheses rooted in social identity theory, hoping to learn more about how individual citizens process information about stigmatized and non-stigmatized problems when offered clues about group prevalence. INFORMATION, PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP During 2011-4, Daniel Posner (MIT), Lily Tsai (MIT), and I will be carrying out a long-term evaluation and assessment of the Uwezo intervention in Tanzania and Kenya. Uwezo is an NGO with a stated commitment to improving public accountability of education with the ultimate goal of raising levels of literacy and numeracy through a strategy that involves a series of assessments and information campaigns. Commissioned by Twaweza – an East African NGO that sponsors Uwezo’s work – we intend to provide a rigorous evaluation and to learn more broadly about how the content and mode of transmitting information influence citizen attitudes, agency, and collective action. Because Uwezo has used randomization as the basis for selecting the districts and villages in which it works, we should be able to make strong causal inferences about the effects of their work at the household- and village-levels, akin to studies designed as randomized controlled trials.

Evan S. Lieberman:

Current Projects

GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT: BASIC SERVICES AND RESPONSES TO INFECTIOUS DISEASE

What explains some of the wide disparities in basic service provision to people in low- and middle-income countries? In particular, in the face of common technologies for preventing and treating various infectious diseases, why are such different policies enacted and implemented?

During 2008-10, I carried out research with several undergraduate and graduate students from Princeton and Rhodes University (South Africa) to learn about the governance of HIV/AIDS, other infectious diseases, and other development challenges at the local level in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. Because so little is known about the configurations of governance, most of this work has been explicitly exploratory. Our research included a mix of in-depth interviews with local councilors, and a range of relevant political actors and service providers; a pen-and-paper survey of local councilors; and the collection of a range of government documents, reports, news articles, and relevant datasets. One important finding was the identification of substantial pathologies associated with multi-level governance – or what Ostrom and others have referred to as “polycentric governance” -- for accountability and efficiency. Also based on that research, I have recently published a paper on the determinants of local councilor political commitment to HIV/AIDS. Additional information about my work on the Governance of Infectious Disease (GID) can be found here. In future research, I hope to explore the effects of alternative framings of information campaigns on the risk perceptions and policy prioritization of citizens and local leaders.

In related research, I have been gathering time-varying and geo-coded data on local service provision in Southern Africa to test a series of hypotheses concerning the determinants of effective democratic governance. This work aims to estimate the effects of both long-term influences that have shaped differential patterns of development, and shorter term reform initiatives and patterns of political competition.

Over the next several years, I will be incorporating what I learn from these studies into a book manuscript on the politics of governance for human development.

ETHNIC POLITICS: VIOLENCE, PROSPERITY, AND POLICY PREFERENCES

Along with Prerna Singh (Harvard University), I have been exploring the consequences of “institutionalized ethnic categories.” As an alternative approach to extant work that conceptualizes ethnic relations in demographic, attitudinal or behavioral terms, we have focused on how the state’s use of particular ethnic categories – or its choice to avoid categorization altogether – structures patterns of political competition. In a paper that considers the consequences of ethnic institutions in 11 Southern African cases, we find that our approach goes a long way towards explaining variation in the outbreaks of ethnic civil war. We are working towards completion of a large-scale study of the consequences of ethnic enumeration on the census and other forms of categorization by the state on violence and prosperity around the world for the past half-century.

In a separate study, Gwyneth McClendon (Princeton University) and I have considered the role of ethnicity in shaping individual preferences for public policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a wide range of analyses of Afrobarometer survey data, we find a consistent link, suggesting that this may be an important mechanism explaining the strong findings between ethnic diversity and the under-provision of good policies around the world. At the very least, our findings seriously challenge recent studies that have posited that tastes and policy preferences are unrelated to ethnic differences within countries.

And in new research, Yarrow Dunham (UC Merced/Princeton) and I are exploring the ways in which social identity may shape risk perceptions and policy priorities. Through the use of randomized survey experiments, we are testing a series of hypotheses rooted in social identity theory, hoping to learn more about how individual citizens process information about stigmatized and non-stigmatized problems when offered clues about group prevalence.

INFORMATION, PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP

During 2011-4, Daniel Posner (MIT), Lily Tsai (MIT), and I will be carrying out a long-term evaluation and assessment of the Uwezo intervention in Tanzania and Kenya. Uwezo is an NGO with a stated commitment to improving public accountability of education with the ultimate goal of raising levels of literacy and numeracy through a strategy that involves a series of assessments and information campaigns. Commissioned by Twaweza – an East African NGO that sponsors Uwezo’s work – we intend to provide a rigorous evaluation and to learn more broadly about how the content and mode of transmitting information influence citizen attitudes, agency, and collective action. Because Uwezo has used randomization as the basis for selecting the districts and villages in which it works, we should be able to make strong causal inferences about the effects of their work at the household- and village-levels, akin to studies designed as randomized controlled trials.