Decentralisation with guardrails: Evaluating Zambia's Constituency Development Fund
Zambia's decentralisation project aims to improve local public goods provision through the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), which has expanded considerably in the last few years. Such an expansion confronts trade-offs. We propose a field experiment varying both the extent of decentralisation and the threat of performance audits to evaluate these trade-offs.
Zambia has embarked on an ambitious decentralisation agenda aiming to enhance the provision of local public goods while limiting leakages. A key pillar in this agenda is the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), which comprise grants from the central government to district-level governments to support local infrastructure projects. The CDF has expanded by a factor of 40 in recent years, and such an expansion confronts trade-offs. We propose a field experiment varying both the extent of decentralisation and the threat of performance audits to evaluate these trade-offs.
Even under the CDF, central government retains approval control over projects and contracts, which creates substantial delays: as of September, 78% of projects selected by Local Authorities (LAs) are awaiting central government approval. The first intervention would further decentralise control over project selection and procurement to a subset of LAs. As this removes a layer of quality control and oversight, a second intervention would deploy advance announcements of performance audits, which would be conducted with 100% likelihood. This combination has been dubbed “ambitious decentralisation with guardrails.”
To evaluate the efficacy of and the complementarities between the interventions, we propose to cross-randomise at the LA-level across 72 rural LAs. We ask: i) does deepening decentralisation of approval control improve project execution speed; and if so, does it affect project quality and leakage; ii) do performance audits improve project execution and reduce leakage in the status quo; and iii) do performance audits mitigate downside risks associated with greater decentralisation?