Working papers

 

Credibility and accountability: The effect of publication on NGO willingness to be evaluated

Abstract: Would scorecards work in the nonprofit sector? To increase accountability and close information gaps, scorecards have been used in various contexts to significant effect. Development literature has noted information gaps in the nonprofit sector, principally in relationships between Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) and their donors. Thus, scorecards have been a suggested solution for aiding in the coordination and accountability of international development. However, the success of this suggestion rests on the assumption that both NGOs and donors would be willing to participate in such an initiative. To evaluate the first part of this assumption—whether NGOs would be willing to participate in a scorecard initiative—we have created mock scorecards based on an actual NGO Scorecard initiative and used an experimental design to gauge NGO support among organizations in South Africa. Our results show that most NGOs would be apprehensive about NGO scorecards, but that there is definitely support in the market for such an initiative.

• Presented at 70th Annual MPSA Conference, Chicago, IL, April 2012

• Presented at 26th Annual National Conference of Undergraduate Research, Ogden, UT, March 2012

 

Institutional legacies: Can government expenditures mitigate multilingual problems?

Abstract: High dropout rates in primary and secondary schools perpetuate the prevalence of failed states. In his 2008 book The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier notes that in order for underdeveloped countries to experience a turnaround, they “need a critical mass of educated people in order to work out and implement a reform strategy” (71). The strongest predictor of this for Collier was the proportion of the population that had secondary schooling. So, what can governments do to keep children in school? And, perhaps more importantly, what are the institutional barriers that are preventing governments from doing so? I argue here that languages—which are often imposed institutional legacies—constitute one of the most pervasive institutions causing children to drop out of schools in the developing world. I show using multilevel modeling that government education expenditures can mitigate multilingual issues, but only to a minor extent. I also review psychological and sociological literature in order to substantiate my theories as well as to explore possible institutional changes that would make government expenditures more effective. This is a monumental issue, especially considering that educational covariates were only outpaced in significance by variables of civil violence when Collier was determining predictors for failed states.

 

Giving up or giving in: Electoral fraud from a voter perspective

Abstract: History has shown that opposition voters in fraudulent electoral systems do not have an easy time of it. Dominant political figures like Chavez in Venezuela or Kuchma in Ukraine or dominant parties like Mexico’s PRI can create the sense that supporting the opposition is a lost cause. Even loyal voters and elites may become discouraged in the face of overbearing and consistent electoral manipulation, causing them to, perhaps, limit their political involvement or even drop out of the system altogether. However, the extent to which these possible declines in participation occur are unclear. My hypotheses center around three such possibilities, using experimental treatments to determine the behavior of voters in different “fraudulent environments.” First, I seek to determine the point at which voters will choose to stop voting in the face of continual loses. Second, I will test a few possibilities as to why discouraged voters choose to stop voting. And third, I look at the possibility of voters actually choosing to switch their vote to the dominant party.

 

Why clientelism? Perspectives from the top down

Abstract: What perceptions about clientelism cause political elites to use it as a strategy? If clientelism were shown to have only small to modest returns, would party strategists move away from the practice? This top-down perspective is absent in current academic discussions of clientelism. Thus, answering it could provide valuable insights into the motivations behind clientelism specifically and electoral malpractice more generally. Mikhail Myagkov et al in their 2009 book The Forensics of Electoral Fraud suggest that, when seeking to explain the extent and depth of fraudulent electoral practices, it is beneficial to take a “forensic” approach—that is, to explore subversive electoral strategies in a similar way as one would a crime (2009, 12-5). In this vein, the authors suggest that the best place to start is with the basic motivations of a politician or party in explaining the use of manipulation (20-1)—i.e. what a priori incentives does a politician have in employing fraud?