Governance Initiative Request for Proposals

Overview

J-PAL’s Governance Initiative (GI) funds randomized evaluations of strategies to improve governance in low- and middle-income countries. By providing targeted funding for rigorous evaluations of the most promising programs to improve governance, GI aims to offer guidance for implementing organizations, governments, and donors, so that policies can be guided by scientific evidence to improve development outcomes.

From August 7 to September 11, 2024, GI is accepting LOIs for its Fall 2024 RFP. From September 23 to November 4, 2024, GI is accepting proposals (by invitation) for its Fall 2024 RFP. This round, GI is accepting proposals from J-PAL affiliates, J-PAL postdocs, all J-PAL invited researchers, and PhD students of J-PAL affiliates and invited researchers. Proposals must relate to GI’s core themes: political participation, corruption and leakages, and state capacity. Please see the Governance Initiative Review Paper (full paper here; executive summary here) and the GI-RFP-Overview-Fall-2024 to learn more about GI’s research priorities.

WizeHive, the new grant management system (GMS) J-PAL is using for our proposals, is more user-friendly. It will, however, require a new login. Please use the Application Instructions and follow the prompts in the links below to create a new login.

Accepted proposal types in Fall 2024:

Up to $400,000 (typically up to $250,000) for full randomized evaluation research projects; the suggested period of performance is 24 - 30 months. Please click here to apply. Here are the RCT Guidelines so you can preview questions and and word limits for answers.
Up to $75,000 for pilot studies; the suggested period of performance is one year. Please click here to apply. Here are the Pilot Guidelines so you can preview questions and word limits for answers.
Up to $10,000 for travel/proposal development grants; the suggested period of performance is six months. Please click here to apply. Here are the Travel/Proposal Development Grant Guidelines so you can preview questions and word limits for answers.
Up to $30,000 for multidisciplinary grants – Type I and Type II; the suggested period of performance for type I is six months and 24 months for type II. Please click here to apply. Here are the Multidisciplinary Guidelines so you can preview questions and word limits for answers. Multidisciplinary grants must relate to political participation.

Eligible PhD students will be able to apply for lower funding levels (capped at $50,000). Please note that PhD students submitting proposals (not LOIs) will need to request letters of support from J-PAL affiliates or invited researchers. PhD students must use WizeHive to request these letters, which will allow the affiliates or invited researchers to submit letters anonymously. PhD students should request such letters early in the proposal preparation process.

All proposals that include Artificial Intelligence (AI) or any new specialized technology should include validation and test accuracy data in the proposal, showing that the technology successfully does what it intends.

Proposal Timeline

To prevent concentration of awards to any specific researchers, and to reduce the burden on initiative review boards, applicants are limited to submitting three proposals, inclusive of all proposal types, per 12-month period per initiative (either as PI or co-PI).

GI usually has two funding cycles per year for full research projects, pilot studies, travel/proposal development grants, and multidisciplinary research projects that address open questions outlined in the Governance Initiative Review Paper.

Our Fall 2024 timeline is as follows: