Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

Abstract

T his article presents an experiment in which 49 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results suggest that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy.

Deterring or Displacing Electoral Irregularities? Spillover Effects of Observers in a Randomized Field Experiment in Ghana

“…Third, this research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that uses randomized field experiments to study how democracy works in practice in specific developing countries and clarify debates and generalizations from observational studies (Collier and Vicente 2010;Humphreys, Masters, and Sandbu 2006;Olken 2010;Wantchekon 2003). Our experimental study reinforces Birch (2007)'s concerns about the robustness of findings from large-n empirical studies that measure fraud using observer reports.…”

The Institutional Determinants of Southern Secession

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