Political Economy of State Capacity

当国家试图提高其能力时，社会在政治上是如何反应的？本文提出了三个实验研究，通过检查国家能力增加的微观行为后果来阐明这个问题。第一篇文章探讨了在刚果民主共和国，将税收委托给当地精英（如城市领导人）如何影响公民对国家和领导人问责制的要求。它审查了从卡南加市的一项随机对照试验中收集的数据，在卡南加市，社区被分配到州或主要的税收征收部门，公民有集体行动的机会，通过公民会议的要求对两者进行问责。结果表明，将征税权委托给地方精英并不妨碍公民要求酋长和国家对政策结果负责的能力或意愿。第二篇文章问，当竞选公职的候选人承诺打击腐败而不是促进经济增长时，是否会产生选举成本。这项研究利用了在印度和英国进行的两项联合实验的证据，在这两项实验中，受访者可以在不同的假设候选人之间进行选择，这些候选人在多个维度上存在差异。结果表明，与承诺改善经济相比，承诺将反腐败作为核心政策纲领可能会在选举中受到选民的惩罚。第三篇文章调查了自下而上的问责压力，以应对专门用于特定公共支出的税收收入。它通过在加纳进行的一项在线调查实验中利用公民对指定用途普遍程度的信念程度的变化来实现这一目标。理论分析表明，专项拨款收入会抑制公民参与政治的动机，从而产生不利的问责效应。总体而言，本文为研究国家-社会关系和国家能力的政治经济学提供了原始数据和新证据以及新的理论框架。

How does society react politically when the state tries to increase its capacity? This thesis presents three experimental studies that shed light on this question by examining the micro-behavioral consequences of such increases in state capacity. The first article explores how delegating tax collection to local elites such as city chiefs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo affects citizen demand for accountability, both from the state and the chiefs. It examines data collected from a randomized controlled trial in the city of Kananga where neighborhoods were assigned to either state or chief tax collection, and citizens had a collective action opportunity to hold both accountable through the request of citizen meetings. The results show that delegating tax collection to local elites does not impede citizens' ability or willingness to hold both chiefs and the state accountable for policy outcomes. The second article asks whether there are electoral costs associated when candidates for political office promise to fight corruption instead of improving economic growth. The study draws on evidence from two conjoint experiments conducted in India and the United Kingdom, where respondents could choose between different hypothetical candidates who varied along multiple dimensions. The results suggest that promising to fight corruption as a central policy platform may be electorally punished by voters compared to promising to improve the economy. The third article investigates the bottom-up accountability pressures in response to earmarking tax revenue for particular public expenditures. It does so by leveraging variation in the extent of citizens' beliefs about the prevalence of earmarking in an online survey experiment to be conducted in Ghana. Theoretical analysis shows that earmarking revenue can have adverse accountability effects by dampening citizens' incentives to engage in politics. Overall, this thesis contributes original data and novel evidence as well as new theoretical frameworks to the study of state-society relations and the political economy of state capacity.