Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T12:19:43.872Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How Does Development Assistance Affect Collective Action Capacity? Results from a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2015

JAMES D. FEARON*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
MACARTAN HUMPHREYS*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
JEREMY M. WEINSTEIN*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
James D. Fearon is Professor at Stanford University and CIFAR.
Macartan Humphreys is Professor at Columbia University and WZB Berlin Social Science Center (mh2245@columbia.edu).
Jeremy M. Weinstein is Professor at Stanford University.

Abstract

Social cooperation is critical to a wide variety of political and economic outcomes. For this reason, international donors have embraced interventions designed to strengthen the ability of communities to solve collective-action problems, especially in post-conflict settings. We exploit the random assignment of a development program in Liberia to assess the effects of such interventions. Using a matching funds experiment we find evidence that these interventions can alter cooperation capacity. However, we observe effects only in communities in which, by design, both men and women faced the collective action challenge. Focusing on mechanisms, we find evidence that program effects worked through improvements in mobilization capacity that may have enhanced communities’ ability to coordinate to solve mixed gender problems. These gains did not operate in areas where only women took part in the matching funds experiment, possibly because they could rely on traditional institutions unaffected by the external intervention. The combined evidence suggests that the impact of donor interventions designed to enhance cooperation can depend critically on the kinds of social dilemmas that communities face, and the flexibility they have in determining who should solve them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron. 2010. “Why Development Economics Needs Theory.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 24 (3): 1732.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agarwal, Bina. 2000. “Conceptualising Environmental Collective Action: Why Gender Matters.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24 (3): 283310.Google Scholar
Andrews, Matt. 2013. The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Avdeenko, Alexandra, and Gilligan, Michael J.. 2013. International Interventions to Build Social Capital: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan. Technical report. Working Paper, NYU.Google Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia, and Grossman, Guy. 2011. “Centralized Sanctioning and Legitimate Authority Promote Cooperation in Humans.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (27): 11023–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1105456108 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bardhan, Pranab. 2002. “Decentralization of Governance and Development.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 16 (4): 185205.Google Scholar
Barron, Patrick, Humphreys, Macartan, Paler, Laura, and Weinstein, Jeremy. 2009. “Community based Reintegration in Aceh.” Indonesian Social Development Papers (12).Google Scholar
Beath, Andrew, Christia, Fotini, and Enikolopov, Ruben. 2013. “Do Elected Councils Improve Governance? Experimental Evidence on Local Institutions in Afghanistan.” 6510. MIT Political Science Department Research Paper No. 2013–24.Google Scholar
Bledsoe, Caroline. 1984. “The Political use of Sande Ideology and Symbolism.” American Ethnologist 11 (3): 455–72.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert. 2004. “The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity: Cooperation in Heterogeneous Populations.” Theoretical Population Biology 65 (1): 1728.Google Scholar
Casey, Katherine, Glennerster, Rachel, and Miguel, Edward. 2012. “Reshaping Institutions: Evidence on Aid Impacts Using a Pre-Analysis Plan.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (4): 1755–812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croson, Rachel, and Gneezy, Uri. 2009. “Gender Differences in Preferences.” Journal of Economic Literature 47 (2): 448–74.Google Scholar
Dal Bó, Pedro, Foster, Andrew, and Putterman, Louis. 2010. “Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy.” American Economic Review 100 (5): 2205–29.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., Humphreys, Macartan, and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2009. “Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia.” Unpublished manuscript.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James, Humphreys, Macartan, and Weinstein, Jeremy. 2014. “Replication Data for: How Does Development Assistance Affect Collective Action Capacity? Results from a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia.” http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/28006.Google Scholar
Freedman, David A. 2008. “On Regression Adjustments to Experiments with Several Treatments.” Annals of Applied Statistics 2: 176–96.Google Scholar
Fuest, Veronika. 2008. “‘This is the Time to Get in Front’: Changing Roles and Opportunities for Women in Liberia.” African Affairs 107 (427): 201–24.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S. and Green, Donald P.. 2012. Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., Ha, Shang E., and Bullock, John G.. 2010. “Enough Already about Black Box Experiments: Studying Mediation Is More Difficult than Most Scholars Suppose.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 628 (1): 200–8. http://ann.sagepub.com/content/628/1/200.abstract Google Scholar
Hamman, John R., Weber, Roberto A., and Woon, Jonathan. 2011. “An Experimental Investigation of Electoral Delegation and the Provision of Public Goods.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (4): 738–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphreys, Macartan, de la Sierra, Raul Sanchez, and van der Windt, Peter. 2013. “Exporting Institutions: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Congo.” Unpublished manuscript, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, Keele, Luke, and Tingley, Dustin. 2010. “A General Approach to Causal Mediation Analysis.” Psychological Methods 15: 309–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imai, Kosuke, Keele, Luke, Tingley, Dustin, and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2011. “Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies.” American Political Science Review 105 (4): 765–89.Google Scholar
Kling, Jeffrey R., Liebman, Jeffrey B., and Katz, Lawrence F.. 2007. “Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects.” Econometrica 75 (1): 83119.Google Scholar
Ledyard, John O. 1995. Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research. In The Handbook of Experimental Economics, eds. Kagel, John H. and Roth, Alvin E.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 111–94.Google Scholar
Ludwig, Jens, Kling, Jeffrey R., and Mullainathan, Sendhil. 2011. “Mechanism Experiments and Policy Evaluations.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25 (3): 1738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansuri, Ghazala, and Rao, Vijayendra. 2012. Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Murphy, William P. 1980. “Secret Knowledge as Property and Power in Kpelle Society: Elders versus Youth.” Africa 50 (2): 193207.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana, and Pemantle, Robin. 2011. “The Perils of Randomization Checks in the Analysis of Experiments.” Draft, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Mwangi, Esther, Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, and Sun, Yan. 2011. “Gender and Sustainable Forest Management in East Africa and Latin America.” Ecology & Society 16 (1) [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol16/iss1/art17/.Google Scholar
Nunn, Nathan, and Wantchekon, Leonard. 2011. “The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa.” American Economic Review 101 (7): 3221–52.Google Scholar
Ortmann, Andreas, and Tichy, Lisa K. 1999. “Gender Differences in the Laboratory: Evidence from Prisoner’s Dilemma Games.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 39 (3): 327–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 1994. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Paul, Archibald, Steven, Bruce, Beverlee, Modad, Watta; Mulbah, Edward, Varpilah, Tornorlah, and Vincent, James. 2005. “Community Cohesion in Liberia: A Post-war Rapid Social Assessment.” Social Development Paper 21. Washington DC: The World Bank http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/docsearch/author/m672218. Google Scholar
Voigtländer, Nico, and Voth, Hans-Joachim. 2012. “Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany*.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (3): 1339–92.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Fearon supplementary material

Fearon supplementary material 1

Download Fearon supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 616.1 KB