Direct democracy and resource allocation: Experimental evidence from Afghanistan

Direct democracy is designed to better align policy outcomes with citizen preferences. To test this proposition, we randomized whether 250 villages across Afghanistan selected projects by secret-ballot referenda or by consultation meetings. We find that referenda reduce the influence of local elites...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Beath, Andrew (Author), Christia, Fotini (Author), Enikolopov, Ruben (Author)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier BV, 2020-09-17T21:24:10Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
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100 1 0 |a Beath, Andrew  |e author 
100 1 0 |a Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science  |e contributor 
700 1 0 |a Christia, Fotini  |e author 
700 1 0 |a Enikolopov, Ruben  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Direct democracy and resource allocation: Experimental evidence from Afghanistan 
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520 |a Direct democracy is designed to better align policy outcomes with citizen preferences. To test this proposition, we randomized whether 250 villages across Afghanistan selected projects by secret-ballot referenda or by consultation meetings. We find that referenda reduce the influence of local elites over both project type and location. Consistent with previous experimental results, we also find that referenda improve villagers' perceptions of the local economy and of the quality of local governance. However, we find no systematic evidence that selecting projects via referenda increases the average impact of such projects. 
520 |a Army Research Office (Award W911NF-12-1-0509) 
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655 7 |a Article 
773 |t Journal of Development Economics