Governance for the Management of Local Public Goods

In this project, conducted jointly with IPA’s Safe Water Program (SWP), researchers seek to shed light on two issues: the impact of public versus secret voting for local positions in a context of ethnic diversity, and the impact of involving government officials in local community projects that would otherwise be managed by NGOs. Communities who receive the water treatment program from SWP will be randomly assigned to one of three sets of interventions: (1) Election of a community worker to manage the project by secret ballot versus hand vote; (2) Monitoring of the community worker by the community alone vs by the community and a government official; and (3) Compensation of the community worker by social recognition vs a flat fee vs performance-based pay. Effects will be evaluated both on the identity of the elected community worker as well as on outcomes for the community.