Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Causal Effects of Leaders' Selection Rules on Participation and Rent-Seeking Behavior in Ugandan Farmer Associations

许多发展中国家的国家退出和（相对）民主化鼓励了自愿自助组织的扩散，如微额供资和农民协会。不幸的是，人们对影响这些团体向其成员提供服务的能力的因素知之甚少。本研究的核心问题是，观察到的志愿协会提供服务的变化是否是管理其领导人选择规则的函数。更具体地说，研究作为乌干达最大发展计划一部分而创建的农民协会的绩效，研究考察了不同的领导选拔规则对成员行为的因果影响。（如参与水平）和领导者的办公行为（如努力水平和寻租）。在自助协会中，选择高级管理人员的规则通常围绕两种相反的类型。一个选择规则是直接投票，即所有协会成员直接投票给他们喜欢的候选人。或者，成员选举代表，这些代表有权选择协会的高级管理人员。直接投票的支持者认为，这一规则增加了基层参与和领导人的合法性。也有人认为，直接投票减少了管理层被狭隘的自我利益所俘虏的可能性。相比之下，代表投票的支持者认为，代表更有能力选出有能力和诚实的候选人。他们认为，这是因为普通成员往往目光短浅，对执行复杂管理任务所需的资格认识不足，缺乏对候选人的了解。显然，解决这一争论具有重要的理论和实践意义。然而，要检验领导者选择规则的相对有效性，在经验上是一个挑战，因为在几乎所有自然发生的环境中，选举规则都是通过复杂的政治过程内生地选择的。为了克服选择偏差问题，本研究采用了一种独特的情况，即领导者的选择规则是由项目促进者从外部分配给新成立的农民协会的。有条件的识别匹配良好的控制组，这种外部分配，允许估计的因果关系的影响，选择规则的行为的成员和领导者，并最终对提供服务的组members.The研究作出了一些贡献。首先，通过使用微观层面，并通过检查动态的小团体中的成员的利益是紧密相连的，这项研究是很好的定位，以测试一些核心的政治学假设之间的关系，投票规则，选民的信息和参与和领导人的问责制和响应。此外，由于其强大的识别策略，本研究有助于理论建设的主题，如社会选择，参与式民主，精英捕获，寻租和政治选择。第三，本研究作出了一些方法上的贡献，例如，从组织心理学和经济学到政治经济学模型的管理能力的措施的整合，并在集群水平上使用IV来衡量在个人层面上的结果变化。

State withdrawal and the (relative) democratization of many developing countries have encouraged the proliferation of voluntary, self-help organizations, such as micro-finance and farmer associations. Unfortunately, only very little is known about the factors influencing those groups' ability to provide services to their members. The central question motivating this study is whether observed variation in voluntary associations' provision of services is a function of the rules governing their leaders' selection.More specifically, studying the performance of farmer associations that were created as part of Uganda's largest development program, the research examines the causal effect of different rules for selecting leaders on members' behavior (e.g. participation-level) and leaders' behavior in office (e.g. effort-level and rent-seeking). In self-help associations, rules for selecting senior executives are usually clustered around two opposing types. One selection rule is Direct Vote, i.e. all association members vote directly for their preferred candidate. Alternatively, members elect representatives who are imbued with the powers to select the association's senior executives. Proponents of direct vote argue that this rule increases grassroots participation and the legitimacy of leaders. It has also been argued that direct vote reduces the likelihood that the management be captured by narrow self-interests. By contrast, proponents of representatives' vote argue that representatives are better positioned to elect able and honest candidates. This, they argue, is because ordinary members tend to be myopic, under-appreciate the qualifications needed to perform complex managerial tasks, and lack information on candidates.Obviously, resolving this debate has important theoretical and practical implications. Alas, testing the relative effectiveness of leaders' selection rules is empirically challenging, since in almost all naturally occurring settings, electoral rules are chosen endogenously through a complex political process.To overcome the selection-bias problem, the proposed study relies on a unique situation in which leaders' selection rules were externally assignment to newly-formed farmer associations by project facilitators. Conditional upon identifying well-matched control groups, this external assignment, allows the estimation of the causal effects of selection rules on the behavior of both members and leaders, and ultimately on the provision of services to group members.The study makes several contributions. First, by using micro-level and by examining dynamics within small groups in which members' interests are closely aligned, this study is well positioned to test some core political science hypotheses regarding the relation between voting rules, voters' information and participation and leaders' accountability and responsiveness. In addition, due to its powerful identification strategy, this study contributes to theory-building in topics such as social choice, participatory democracy, elite capture, rent-seeking and political selection. Third, this study makes several methodological contributions, for example the integration of measures of managerial abilities from organizational psychology and economics into political economy models, and the use of IV at the cluster level to measure outcome variations at the individual level.