Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Accountability in Developing Democracies -- Within-Country Evidence from Mali

虽然发展中国家的新一轮民主化浪潮经常被称赞为一项成就，但人们对新民主国家的运作情况缺乏了解。这些新的多党选举制度与之前的独裁政权的不同之处在于，公民有能力追究他们的代表的责任。因此，为了了解民主是否以及如何在发展中国家取得成功，这项研究试图解决以下两个问题：是否以及如何实现问责制；以及哪些基本的社会或经济条件可能有助于问责制。这些问题将在马里的背景下进行研究，马里是一个贫穷的非洲国家，经过近20年的稳定民主治理。最近的权力下放政策产生了703个民主选举产生的地方政府。该项目将比较各社区治理的成功和失败，以更好地理解产生问责的机制，以及为什么选举产生的领导人在一些地方表现得比其他地方更好。初步分析表明，信息在促进地方政府问责方面发挥着重要作用。当选民对他们的政府抱有很低的期望时(就像他们在马里所做的那样)，他们就不会制裁做出糟糕决定的民选领导人。在这种情况下，一点信息就能起到很大的作用。让选民了解当地政府的责任和财政能力，可以让选民形成更合适的预期。该项目认为，这应该会产生更好的问责。本论文将采用定性与定量相结合的研究方法。首先，它将利用国内关于社会和政治力量对马里地方政府绩效的影响的数据，以测试现有的治理理论。其次，研究人员将对选民和政客进行定性采访和调查，以产生关于马里政治行为的新假设。第三，研究人员将进行一项实地实验，以测试信息如何影响以选民期望较低为特征的发展中民主国家的问责。这个项目的学术价值在于，它能够增进我们对民主制度如何在目前鲜为人知的背景下运作的知识。已对发达国家的民主实践进行了大量研究。对于同样的机构是否在发展中国家以类似的方式运作并具有类似的结果，人们知之甚少。从某种程度上说，马里社会与其他发展中民主国家相似，具有强大的亲属网络、高度的信息不对称和对政府的低期望，这一国家内部分析的结果可以对改善其他地方的民主表现产生重要影响。该项目的结果有望为了解贫穷民主国家公民的行为方式提供新的见解，这是改善治理的必要步骤。它将产生有关民主如何在贫穷国家发挥作用的理论和实践知识。这项研究将能够回答一些问题，如非正式亲属关系网络如何影响治理，马里人如何决定投票给谁，以及信息如何改善问责。该项目的跨学科性质不仅可以更成功地解决问题，而且还将使更广泛的受众能够获得答案。这些受众包括马里等发展中国家政府以及世界银行和美国国际开发署等发展组织，这些组织每年花费数十亿美元在世界各地促进民主。

While the new wave of democratization in developing countries is often lauded as an achievement, there is a deficit of knowledge about how well new democracies are working. What distinguishes these new multi-party electoral systems from the autocratic regimes that preceded them is the ability of citizens to hold their representatives to account. Hence, to understand whether and how democracies are succeeding in developing countries, this research seeks to address the following two questions: whether and how accountability is being achieved; and what underlying social or economic conditions might facilitate accountability.These questions will be studied in the context of Mali, a poor African nation recognized for nearly two decades of stable democratic governance. A recent policy of decentralization created 703 democratically elected local governments. This project will compare successes and failures in governance across communities to better understand the mechanisms that generate accountability, and why elected leaders are performing better in some places than others. Preliminary analyses suggest that information plays an important role in fostering local government accountability. When voters have low expectations of their government (as they do in Mali), they fail to sanction elected leaders for making bad decisions. In such a context, a little information can go a long way. Informing voters of their local government's responsibilities and of their fiscal capacity allows voters to form more appropriate expectations. This, the project posits, should generate better accountability. This dissertation project will employ a multi-method approach that is both qualitative and quantitative. First, it will exploit within-country data on the impact of social and political forces on local government performance in Mali to test existing theories of governance. Second, the researcher will conduct qualitative interviews and surveys with voters and politicians to generate new hypotheses about political behavior in Mali. Third, the researcher will conduct a field experiment to test how information affects accountability in developing democracies characterized by voters with low expectations. The intellectual merit of this project lies in its ability to advance our knowledge of how democratic institutions work in contexts that are currently little understood. Much research has been done on democratic practices in developed country settings. Less is known about whether the same institutions work in similar ways and have comparable outcomes in a developing country context. To the extent that Malian society is similar to other developing democracies with strong kin-based networks, high information asymmetries, and low expectations of government, findings from this within-country analysis can have important implications for improving democratic performance elsewhere. The results of this project promise new insights into the ways in which citizens behave in poor democracies, a necessary step to improving governance. It will generate both theoretical and practical knowledge about how democracy works in poor countries. The research will be able to answer questions such as how informal kinship networks affect governance, how Malians decide for whom to vote, and how information improves accountability. The interdisciplinary nature of the project not only allows the questions to be addressed more successfully, but will also make the answers accessible to a wider audience. That audience includes developing country governments such as Mali's and development organizations such as the World Bank and USAID that spend billions of dollars each year in the interest of promoting democracy around the world.