International Interventions to Build Social Capital: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan

ALEXANDRA AVDEENKO^a1 c1 and MICHAEL J. GILLIGAN^a2 c2

^a1 University of Mannheim

^a2 New York University

Abstract

Increasingly the international community attempts to improve local public infrastructure in developing countries by creating more participatory local governance and social capital. We report on a randomized field experiment conducted in 24 communities (16 treated and 8 control) in rural Sudan. We offer a clearer theoretical statement of how these programs might alter the political landscape of the recipient villages. We measure norms using lab-in-the-field techniques and we measure network density with a survey of our 475 lab subjects. We appraise the participatory character of local governance and civic participation with a survey of 576 households. The program did not affect either networks or norms, but civic participation and the participatory nature of local governance increased. Thus we attribute the increase in citizen participation not to social capital growth but to more open local governing institutions.

Correspondence

^c1 Alexandra Avdeenko is Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Economics, University of Mannheim, L7 3-5, 8131 (avdeenko@uni-mannheim.de).

^c2 Michael J. Gilligan is Professor, Department of Politics, New York University, 19 West 4th St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10012 (michael.gilligan@nyu.edu).

Footnotes

  This article is a product of the Social Protection Unit, Africa Region; and Impact Evaluation Team, Development Research Group. The team gratefully acknowledges financial support for this research from the Community Development Fund (CDF), the Bank of Netherlands Partnership Program, and the Knowledge for Change Program II. We have many people to thank for their valuable suggestions during and throughout this research: Bernd Beber, Graeme Blair, Fotini Christia, Ana de La O Torres, Oeindrila Dube, James Fearon, Ronny Freier, Joanne Gowa, Guy Grossman, Kosuke Imai, Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath, Cyrus Samii, Alexandra Scacco, Jacob Shapiro, and Thomas Siedler. We thank Katherine Casey for sharing code. Ms. Avdeenko acknowledges financial support from DIW Berlin, the Fritz Thyssen, and the German Science Foundation (SFB 884). We thank the World Bank staff in Khartoum, the CDF staff, especially Abdul Turkawi, and the lab-in-the-field team: Yassir Osman Fadol, Bilal Azarag Tia, Nazik Mubarak, Zahara Ahmed Al Sanosi, Mona Basheir Ahmed, Ismail Mohammed Ismail, Nahla Idris Adam, Amal Ibrahim Ahmed, Afkar Osman, Salah El Din Yagoub Bushari, and Ahmed Mohammed Hassan. We also thank Endeshaw Tadesse, Marcus E. Holmlund, Radu Ban, Isabel Beltran, and the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit for their invaluable support and patience. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the World Bank, the Community Development Fund, or the Government of Sudan.