Governance, Accountability And Political Economy

The governance, accountability and political economy programme investigates economic performance under different political regimes in developing countries. A large volume of research will deal with corruption, and illicit behaviours. In addition, recent research has found that female elected representatives make policy choices that are systematically different from those of their male counterparts, so gender will be also an important factor. Conflict and post-conflict management will also receive significant attention. As many of less developed countries have been plagued by violent conflict, a deeper understanding of its causes and consequences will be of paramount importance and this research programme aims to contribute to the design of policies and institutions to manage post-conflict reconstruction.

Political Violence in Pakistan 1988-2010: Patterns and Trends
Working Paper
Authors: Jacob N. Shapiro, C. Christine Fair, Rasul Bakhsh Rais
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Theft and Loss of Electricity in an Indian State
Working Paper
Authors: Miriam Golden, Brian Min
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Monitoring the Monitors: Using ICT to improve government process evaluation and monitoring in Punjab, Pakistan
Research Project
Authors: Michael Callen, Ali Hasanain, Saad Gulzar, Yasir Khan
In many developing countries, accurate data on resource utilization in public schools, hospitals, and other service facilities are rarely available. This creates two parallel sets of problems: First, a lack of data for process evaluation can lead to misallocations in medicine, human and other service delivery resources. Second, information…
Community Involvement in Public Goods Provision: Evidence From a Field Experiment in Ghana
Working Paper
Author: Thomas Walker
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Peasants into Democrats? Evaluating the impact of information on local governance in Mali
Research Project
Author: James Fearon
Recognizing the obstacles that poor and often illiterate citizens face to monitoring politicians in democratic developing countries, this project seeks to examine the effects of increasing information on local governance and accountability. It evaluates the effects of a civics course implemented at the village level in a random selection…
Can Electronic Procurement Improve Infrastructure Provision? Evidence from a Large Rural Road Program in India
Research Project
Author: Rohini Pande
This study examines the impact of e-procurement on the construction of roads in India, specifically examining the effect on price, quality and schedule of road construction.
BRAC, IGC, iiG International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Development, March 2011
Event
Author: Adam.Green:
Why People Vote for Corrupt Politicians: Evidence from Survey Experiments in Afghanistan
Research Project
Authors: Rikhil Bhavnani, Luke Condra
IGC researchers challenge the fundamental assumption that voters always penalize corruption at the ballot box. To do so, we turn to Afghanistan, one of most corrupt countries in the world. Given the country’s high corruption levels, and the critical security imperatives in the country, there is hardly a more…
Political Clientelism and Government Accountability in West Bengal
Research Project
Authors: Pranab Bardhan, Dilip Mookherjee , Sandip Mitra
Many developing countries are decentralizing delivery of public services to local governments in the hope this will enhance accountability of service providers. To what extent is it actually succeeding? This issue has become highly relevant in large parts of the developing world, given widespread evidence of serious problems of corruption,…
Does female leadership impact on the quality of public goods? Evidence from a public poverty alleviation programme in Andhra Pradesh, India
Research Project
Author: Farzana Afridi
In this study we seek to identify the impact of female leadership on the governance of a large poverty alleviation programme in India, in a context where local people can closely monitor the actual against the prescribed allocation of public funds. We focus on the implementation of projects under the…
Status-based taxation: A proposal to increase tax revenue collection
Research Project
Author: Raj Chetty
This project explores whether concerns for social status can be exploited as a “carrot” to encourage tax compliance and increase tax revenue collection in developing countries.
Local Level Estimates of Corruption and Theft in the Energy Sector in Uttar Pradesh, India
Research Project
Author: Miriam A. Golden
IGC researchers investigate the connections between energy losses and political corruption in Uttar Pradesh, a state of 190 million people in northern India.