Elections and Collective Action: Evidence from Changes in Traditional Institutions in Liberia

Abstract

yet many communities that do not select their leaders by elections have also proved themselves capable of overcoming collective action dilemmas. in particular, the reliance on "traditional" leaders to mobilize communities for collective action is common in developing countries. such leaders are typically not elected and they are argued to be effective in mobilizing collective action because of their ability to appeal to custom and long-established norms as a source of legitimacy.3 in the * the authors would like to thank oeindrila dube, Guy Grossman, caroline Payne, three anonymous reviewers, the editors of World Politics, and audience members at the contemporary african Political Economy Research seminar and the alexander hamilton center Graduate student conference at new york university, and the center for the study of african Politics at the university of Florida, for helpful comments. We are grateful to cyrus samii for his collaboration on this project, and to the survey team for excellent work. Part of this project was commissioned by the united nations' office of internal oversight services (un-oios), as part of an evaluation of the united nations Mission in liberia's (unMil) operations, with additional funding provided by the swedish Government's Folke Bernadotte academy. Kate Baldwin acknowledges the support of the center for the study of democratic Politics at Princeton university. the views expressed in this paper are the authors' own and do not reflect the position of funding agencies.

Exporting Democratic Practices: Evidence from a Village Governance Intervention in Eastern Congo

“…Martinez-Bravo et al (2011) find evidence for beneficial effects of local elections on local accountability in China; Grossman (2014) provides evidence on the effects of different types of rules. Other work finds adverse effects: Baldwin and Mvukiyehe (2015) for example examine the introduction of elections in Liberia and find evidence that they can worsen local collective action. Unlike our study however, these studies focus primarily on the effects of institutions on the decisions made under these institutions, rather than on the prior question of whether communities will use these institutions.…”

Traditional institutions and social cooperation: Experimental evidence from the Buganda Kingdom

“…Koter (2013) shows that where strong traditional leaders exist, cross-ethnic allegiances can emerge when political candidates, via these intermediaries, reach out to non-co-ethnic communities. Baldwin and Mvukiyehe (2015) demonstrate that chiefs selected by customary mechanisms perform better in providing public order in Liberia.…”

“…An increasing number of studies analyze traditional political institutions and representatives, that is, chiefs, elders, or councils and courts made up of traditional leaders (Acemoglu et al, 2014;Baldwin, 2013Baldwin, , 2014Baldwin, , 2015Baldwin and Mvukiyehe, 2015;Koter, 2013). Traditional institutions and leaders can have a significant influence in mobilizing their constituencies, since constituents perceive them as legitimate political actors in otherwise weak states (Logan, 2013).…”

The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional Governance and the State

“…She identifies the reasons for these positive potentials in the time horizon of chiefs, who can act as "development brokers" without fears of losing office and with a long-term interest in the well-being of the communities they live in. Baldwin and Mvukiyehe (2015) examine the hypothesis that elections facilitate collective action by exploiting a natural experiment that saw some customary chiefs in Liberia elected by their constituency and others appointed following the civil wars in the country. Using surveys and interactive games played with chiefs, they find that introducing elections into traditional polities does "not significantly improve most types of collective action and .…”