Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-qdpjg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-27T09:24:18.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does Political Oversight of the Bureaucracy Increase Accountability? Field Experimental Evidence from a Dominant Party Regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2022

PIA J. RAFFLER Open the ORCID record for PIA J. RAFFLER [Opens in a new window]
PIA J. RAFFLER*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, United States
*
Pia J. Raffler, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University, United States, [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Concerned with poor service delivery, a large literature studies accountability of politicians to voters. This article instead considers accountability relationships within governments—the ability of politicians to implement policies by holding bureaucrats responsible for their actions. In collaboration with the Ugandan government, I conducted a field experiment across 260 local governments. The objective of the reform was to empower local politicians to exercise closer oversight over the bureaucracy through training and the dissemination of financial information. Lowered oversight costs increase politicians’ monitoring effort and the quality of services, but only in areas where the political leadership is not aligned with the dominant party. In areas under ruling-party control, politicians fear uncovering mismanagement of funds. In contrast to scholars arguing that insulating bureaucrats allows them to do their jobs more effectively, these findings imply that increased political oversight can improve government responsiveness in settings with a modicum of party competition.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 4 , November 2022 , pp. 1443 - 1459
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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

Aberbach, Joel D., Putnam, Robert D., and Rockman, Bert A.. 1981. Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey S. 1989. “Agency Budgets, Cost Information, and Auditing.” American Journal of Political Science 33 (3): 670–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey S., and Weingast, Barry R.. 1992. “The Political Control of Bureaucracies under Asymmetric Information.” American Journal of Political Science 36 (2): 509–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bardhan, Pranab, and Mookherjee, Dilip. 2006. Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, David P., and Ferejohn, John. 1987. “Bargaining and Agenda Formation in Legislatures.” The American Economic Review 77 (2): 303–09.Google Scholar
Berliner, Daniel. 2017. “Sunlight or Window Dressing?” Governance 30 (4): 641–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brierley, Sarah. 2020. “Unprincipled Principals: Co-opted Bureaucrats and Corruption in Ghana.” American Journal of Political Science 64 (2): 209–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conroy-Krutz, Jeffrey. 2013. “Information and Ethnic Politics in Africa.” British Journal of Political Science 43 (2): 345–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dragu, Tiberiu, and Polborn, Mattias. 2013. “The Administrative Foundation of the Rule of Law.” The Journal of Politics 75 (4): 1038–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunning, Thad, Grossman, Guy, Humphreys, Macartan, Hyde, Susan D., McIntosh, Craig, and Nellis, Gareth, eds. 2019. Information, Accountability, and Cumulative Learning: Lessons from Metaketa I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, David, and O’Halloran, Sharyn. 1994. “Administrative Procedures, Information, and Agency Discretion.” American Journal of Political Science 38 (3): 697–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Peter B. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1999. “Electoral Accountability and the Control of Politicians: Selecting Good Types versus Sanctioning Poor Performance.” In Democracy, Accountability, and Representation, eds. Przeworski, Adam, Stokes, Susan C., and Manin, Bernard, 55–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferejohn, John. 1986. “Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control.” Public Choice 50 (1): 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Claudio, and Finan, Frederico. 2008. “Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effect of Brazil’s Anti-Corruption Program on Electoral Outcomes.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (2): 703–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gandhi, Jennifer. 2008. Political Institutions under Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Guy, and Michelitch, Kristin. 2018. “Information Dissemination, Competitive Pressure, and Politician Performance between Elections.” American Political Science Review 112 (2): 280–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gulzar, Saad, and Pasquale, Benjamin J. 2017. “Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Development: Evidence from India.” American Political Science Review 111 (1): 162–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Robin. 2015. “Attribution and Accountability: Voting for Roads in Ghana.” World Politics 67 (4): 656–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassan, Mai. 2020. Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassan, Mai, and O’Mealia, Thomas. 2018. “Uneven Accountability in the Wake of Political Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 55 (2): 161–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honig, Daniel. 2020. “Mission-Driven Bureaucrats: Balancing Performance and Promotion in Thailand and Beyond.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Huber, John D., and Shipan, Charles R.. 2002. Deliberate Discretion? The Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Igbokwe-Ibeto, Chinyeaka. 2012. “Issues and Challenges in Local Government Project Monitoring and Evaluation in Nigeria.” European Scientific Journal 8 (18) 180–95.Google Scholar
Kagoro, Jude. 2016. “Competitive Authoritarianism in Uganda.” Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 10 (1): 155–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Winston. 2013. “Agnostic Notes on Regression Adjustments to Experimental Data: Reexamining Freedman’s Critique.” The Annals of Applied Statistics 7 (1): 295–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Winston, Green, Donald P., and Coppock, Alexander. 2016. “Standard Operating Procedures for Don Green’s Lab at Columbia.” https://github.com/acoppock/Green-Lab-SOP.Google Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz. 2006. Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz, and Kricheli, Ruth. 2010. “Political Order and One-Party Rule.” Annual Review of Political Science 13:123–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lucy E., and Raffler, Pia J.. 2021. “Fault Lines: The Effects of Bureaucratic Power on Electoral Accountability.” American Journal of Political Science 65 (1): 210–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbaku, John Mukum. 1994. “Bureaucratic Corruption and Policy Reform in Africa.” The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies 19 (2): 149–75.Google Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew D., and Schwartz, Thomas. 1984. “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms.” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1): 165–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mwenda, Andrew M., and Tangri, Roger. 2005. “Patronage Politics, Donor Reforms, and Regime Consolidation in Uganda.” African Affairs 104 (416): 449–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niskanen, William A. 1975. “Bureaucrats and Politicians.” The Journal of Law and Economics 18 (3): 617–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Office of the Auditor General (OAG). 2015. Annual Report of the Auditor General. Value for Money Audit Report, Kampala, Uganda: OAG.Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Guillermo A. 1998. “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies.” Journal of Democracy 9 (3): 112–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olken, Benjamin A. 2007. “Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia.” Journal of Political Economy 115 (2): 200–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pande, Rohini. 2011. “Can Informed Voters Enforce Better Governance? Experiments in Low-Income Democracies.” Annual Review of Economics 3: 215–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pereira, Luiz C. B. 2001. “State Reform in the 1990s: Logic and Control Mechanisms.” In Institutions and the Role of the State, eds. Leonardo Burlamaqui, Ana Célia Castro, and Ha-Joon Chang, 175–219. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Peters, B. Guy, and Pierre, Jon. 2004. The Politicization of the Civil Service in Comparative Perspective: A Quest for Control. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierskalla, Jan H., and Sacks, Audrey. 2020. “Personnel Politics: Elections, Clientelistic Competition and Teacher Hiring in Indonesia.” British Journal of Political Science 50 (4): 1283–1305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Platas, Melina Izama, and Raffler, Pia. 2021. “Closing the Gap: Information and Mass Support in a Dominant Party Regime.” Journal of Politics 83 (4): 1619–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raffler, Pia J., Posner, Daniel N., and Parkerson, Doug. 2020. “Can Citizen Pressure Improve Public Service Provision?” Working Paper. http://piaraffler.com/citizenpressure/.Google Scholar
Raffler, Pia J. 2022. “Replication Data for: Does Political Oversight of the Bureaucracy Increase Accountability? Field Experimental Evidence from a Dominant Party Regime.” Harvard Dataverse. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SI0NQF.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seabright, Paul. 1996. “Accountability and Decentralisation in Government: An Incomplete Contracts Model.” European Economic Review 40 (1): 61–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transparency International. 2015. “Corruption Perceptions Index.” Transparency International. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2015.Google Scholar
Tripp, Aili Mari. 2010. Museveni’s Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Tsai, Lily L. 2007. “Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China.” American Political Science Review 101 (2): 355–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBoS). 2015. Statistical Abstract. Kampala: UBoS.Google Scholar
United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). 2008. Decentralization and Local Democracy in the World. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.Google Scholar
Van de Walle, Nicolas. 2003. “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 41 (2): 297–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. 1922. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society). Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1970. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. eds. Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, Martin J. 2017. “The Political Economy of Unfinished Development Projects: Corruption, Clientelism, or Collective Choice?” American Political Science Review 111 (4): 705–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Scott, and Magaloni, Beatriz. 2020. “Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes.” Comparative Political Studies 53 (9): 1525–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1887. “The Study of Administration.” Political Science Quarterly 2 (2): 197–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Raffler Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SI0NQF
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Raffler supplementary material

Raffler supplementary material

Download Raffler supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 617.1 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.