Accountability Flashcards
How can we change people’s behavior in order to improve development?
- By holding them accountable
- Rewards for effective implementation of the rules
- Punishments for breaking the rules
(Definition of) Principal-Agent model
- Principals employ agents to help achieve development
- But cannot see everything agents are doing (“information asymmetry)
- Principals set a contract with incentives
– Contracts and hierarchy are central to bureaucracies and development - Agents respond to those incentives
– But agents have their own objectives
Examples of ways to improve accountability
- To prevent political corruption we might establish an agency to monitor politicians and pass laws with large punishments - “Horizontal accountability”
– eg. International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala - To make sure teachers work hard we might give a bonus to those that improve students’ scores more - “Performance-related pay”
- To make aid work we might pay countries for progress in achieving development targets, not just with grants or loans - “Cash on delivery”
What are the reasons that accountability mechanisms often fail?
- Multiple tasks
- Multiple principles
- Moral hazard
- The principal’s objectives
- Compliance is hard in developing contexts
- Incentives compete with informal institutions/norms
- Systemic loss of investment
Multiple tasks (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
eg. teaching basic skills and encouraging analytical thinking; incentives encourage a bias to whichever is easier to measure
Multiple principals (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
- eg. reporting to multiple politicians creates confusion and discourages supervision
– The number of people able to access employment under India’s employment guarantee scheme (NGREGS) is 9% higher where bureaucrats report to a single politician
Moral hazard (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
Agents take excessive risks knowing they will be bailed out by the principal
The principal’s objectives (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
If the principal doesn’t want development, the agent won’t make it happen
Compliance is hard in developing contexts (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
- Poverty and a weak state limit how much people can control their response
– Teachers don’t turn up on time because transportation is unreliable, electricity is irregular, health problems are common
– Valid excuses undermine enforcement and compliance
– Nurses are absent from 44% of clinics in India in 2003
—> 2006 reform: pay reduction for absent nurses; monitoring with time-stamp machines
—> Presence increased for 6 months
—> But then nurses started getting exemptions or reported broken time-stamp machines
—> Absenteeism returned to normal
Incentives compete with informal institutions/norms (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
- Financial motivation can crowd out intrinsic motivation
– eg. paying extra as punishment for picking up child from school late may make you more likely to be late as it now feels like an exchange as opposed to an inconvenience
Systemic loss of investment (reasons that accountability mechanisms fail)
- Where corruption is compensating for a weak state/institutions
– eg. USAID cut support to Afghanistan’s health sector which was saving 100,000 children per year due to a lack of receipts
– Cracking down on corruption makes bureaucrats risk-averse, eg. Brazil’s random audits reduced government spending and worsened healthcare indicators
– New rules/supervisors create new opportunities for rent extraction/corruption
Who are the ultimate principal in democracy? and how does principal agent model work in a democracy?
Voters are the ultimate principal in democracy
- Politicians are the agent
- Elections allow us to reward and sanction politicians
- Demand-side accountability, not supply-side
- “One person, one vote”
- eg. President Mutharika of Malawi was kicked out once the courts reran an election tainted by fraud
– Replaced by President Chakwera
- eg. where audit reports of corruption are released before an election, Brazilian mayors are less likely to be re-elected
What is the issue of having voters in charge of holding leaders accountable?
- Voters are poorly informed about politicians’ performance
– There’s only a very weak correlation between prior beliefs and true information
– Accurate information is necessary for accountability
Can we boost electoral accountability by providing true information to voters?
- Field experiments in 6 countries informed voters about politicians’ performance
- And recorded who they voted for
- “Bad news” should lead to voting against the incumbent
- Compared to a control group that received no information
- Information had ZERO impacy on voter behavior
– In any country
– No accountability
Why do voters not respond to politicians’ performance? (electoral accountability)
- Political skills are needed to interpret information
– Who is responsible for healthcare? - Ethnic voting
– Only rewarding co-ethnics
– Only punishing “others” - Clientelism short-circuits accountability
– One vote won’t make a difference
– But determines whether you get $10, or a job - Lobbying and corruption are more important
– “One dollar one vote” - Lack of social contract
– Without taxes, voters feel less stake in punishing bad politicians - Lack of voter coordination/collective action
– Accountability only works if any voters react
– Voters are cynical: “all politicians are thieves” - Backfire
– Why should I be honest if no-one else is?
– In Lagos, anti-corruption messages make citizens more willing to pay a bribe - Backlash
– Politicians react with competing or misinformation
Definition of social accountability
Accountability through direct citizen engagement outside of elections
Methods of social accountability
- Complaints
- Writing letters
- Querying politicians
- Reporting in the media
- Citizen/NGO monitoring of services
- Protests
- Town hall meetings
- Participatory budgeting
- Parent-teacher associations
Who leads social accountability?
- “Voice” or client power
- Led by civil society
- OR by one part o the state against another
– eg. monitoring agency asks citizens to help gather information on the Ministry of Infrastructure
Examples of where social accountability was used
- Problem 1
– Only 20% of government spending reached schools in Uganda
—> Corruption by local government officials - Response 1
– Providing information to monitor school grants
—> School closer to a Newspaper seller > Headteachers know about grants > Schools receive more of the grant (+80%) > More students (+20), better grades (+6%) - Problem 2
– High infant mortality rates due to poor attendance and care at primary health clinics - Solution 2
– Encouraging “community monitoring” by NGOs led to a 33% reduction in under-5 mortality in Uganda - Problem 3
– Infrastructure projects are often abandoned by contractors or building quality is poor - Solution 3
– An online portal where citizens and NGOs can track and upload progress and photos of government projects in Kaduna State, Nigeria
Why does social accountability often fail?
- Citizens lack information, skills, and confidence
– eg. for attributing responsibility - Dependent on allies in the state for success
– eg. judiciary, legislators, statistical agencies publishing data - Backlash (elites punish citizens who speak out
– Citizens are made “passive” by powerful state - The rich exit to the private sector
– Reducing pressure to improve services
– eg. in the Philippines, private schools reduce the quality of public schools - Pressure depends on collective action
– Free-riding: citizens are busy
