We evaluate the role of a new type of democratic institution, participatory budgeting (PB), for improving citizens’ well-being. Participatory institutions are said to enhance governance, citizens’ empowerment, and the quality of democracy, creating a virtuous cycle to improve the poor’s well-being. Drawing from an original database of Brazil’s largest cities over the last 20 years, we assess whether adopting PB programs influences several indicators of well-being inputs, processes, and outcomes. We find PB programs are strongly associated with increases in health care spending, increases in civil society organizations, and decreases in infant mortality rates. This connection strengthens dramatically as PB programs remain in place over longer time frames. Furthermore, PB’s connection to well-being strengthens in the hand of mayors from the nationally powerful, ideologically and electorally motivated Workers’ Party. Our argument directly addresses debates on democracy and well-being and has powerful implications for participation, governance, and economic development

I administer a quasi-experiment using undergraduate Political Science majors in statistics classes to evaluate whether "flipping the classroom" (the treatment) alters students' applied problem solving performance and satisfaction relative to students in a traditional classroom environment (the control). I also assess whether general student characteristics such as when/where students took the prerequisite course, GPA and gender influence performance. I find flipping the classroom gives students statistically significant advantages in difficult, applied areas emphasized in class. Furthermore, students in the flipped classroom feel they learned more and enjoyed the course more than those in a traditional classroom. I argue students' affective preference for a flipped classroom is important for student motivation, recollection and future use of quantitative data analysis. Flipping the classroom entails high start-up costs, but it can merit implementing to improve both effective and affective instructional outcomes. Keywords: flipping the classroom, statistics education, quasi-experiment, active learning The Teaching and Learning QuestionStudents in my advanced statistics classes have the most difficulty grasping the most important concepts. These students almost always perform well at lower-order cognitive tasks such as memorizing a definition or calculating a numerical value, but considerably less well when asked to apply the material in context. This troubles me as an instructor because students acquire useful skills through application-not memorization and regurgitation. Yet, it is clear higher-order cognitive tasks surrounding applications of the material are difficult not just for Political Science students in statistics classes, where the material may be relatively foreign, but for students in general. Harnessing theoretical concepts and applying them in practice is one of the greatest conceptual leaps students make in the course of their education and is therefore one of students' greatest challenges. It is also one of the most important learning outcomes because the point of education is not to recite facts and figures, but to apply concepts and skills to solve problems. Students can always look up information. However, learning how to use information purposefully will help students throughout their lives. It is therefore critical to understand the factors that influence students' ability to move between theory and practice, from lower-order cognition to higher-order cognition. My research evaluates course delivery strategies designed to bridge the gap between lower-order and higher-order cognitive learning outcomes. Specifically, I use a quasi-experiment in two sections of advanced statistics classes to determine if flipping the classroom, a popular instructional technique in K-12 and some university-level educational environments, influences student performance on applied statistics assignments relative to traditional instructional methods.Flipping the classroom has gained prominence as a course d...

Participatory Budgeting (PB) incorporates citizens directly into budgetary decision-making. It continues to spread across the globe as government officials and citizens adopt this innovative program in the hopes of strengthening accountability, civil society, and well-being. Governments often transform PB’s rules and procedures to meet local needs, thus creating wide variation in how PB programs function. Some programs retain features of radical democracy, others focus on community mobilization, and yet other programs seek to promote participatory development. This book provides a theoretical and empirical explanation to account for widespread variation in PB’s adoption, adaptation, and impacts. The book first develops six “PB types,” then, to illustrate patterns of change across the globe, four empirical chapters present a rich set of case studies that illuminate the wide differences among these programs. The empirical chapters are organized regionally, with chapters on Latin America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and North America. The empirical chapters demonstrate that there are temporal, spatial, economic, and organizational factors that produce different programs across regions but similar programs within each region. A key finding is that the change in PB rules and design is now leading to significant differences in the outcomes these programs produce. We find that some programs successfully promote accountability, expand civil society, and improve well-being, but, that we continue to lack evidence that might demonstrate if PB leads to significant social or political change elsewhere.

How does democracy work to improve well-being? In this article, we disentangle the component parts of democratic practice—elections, civic participation, expansion of social provisioning, local administrative capacity—to identify their relationship with well-being. We draw from the citizenship debates to argue that democratic practices allow citizens to gain access to a wide range of rights, which then serve as the foundation for improving social well-being. Our analysis of an original dataset covering over 5,550 Brazilian municipalities from 2006 to 2013 demonstrates that competitive elections alone do not explain variation in infant mortality rates, one outcome associated with well-being. We move beyond elections to show how participatory institutions, social programs, and local state capacity can interact to buttress one another and reduce infant mortality rates. It is important to note that these relationships are independent of local economic growth, which also influences infant mortality. The result of our thorough analysis offers a new understanding of how different aspects of democracy work together to improve a key feature of human development.

This is an author-produced, peer-reviewed version of this article. © 2009, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). The final, definitive version of this document can be found online at World Development, doi: 10.1016Development, doi: 10. /j.worlddev.2011 1 NOTICE: This is the author's version of a work accepted for publication by Elsevier. Changes resulting from the publishing process, including peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms, may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. The definitive version has been published in World Development, Volume 39, Issue 9, 2011. DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011 Political Polarization as a Constraint on Government: Evidence from Corruption David S. Brown University of Colorado Michael Touchton Boise State University Andrew Whitford University of Georgia AbstractEfforts to explain corruption have increased dramatically in recent years. The interest stems from the increasing weight economists assign to corruption when explaining economic growth. Much research focuses on how political institutions influence perceptions of corruption. We move this debate in a new direction by addressing a previously ignored dimension: ideological polarization. We contend perceptions of corruption are determined not only by specific institutional features of the political system -such as elements of voting systems, ballot structures, or separation of powers -but by who sits at the controls. We employ panel data from a broad variety of countries to test our theoretical argument. Contrary to recent findings by both economists and political scientists, we show that ideological polarization predicts perceptions of corruption.

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with a gross domestic product of around US$3500 per capita, health spending of approximately $220 per capita, a labour market dominated by informal work, and a weak health system. However, in the response to COVID-19, Bolivia has fared better than other health systems in the region and provides insight with regard to the implementation of subnational nonpharmaceutical interventions and supporting workers without social protection.The Bolivian Government confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the country on March 10, 2020, and responded quickly by cancelling events, closing schools and borders, and implementing a national lockdown on March 22, 2020. However, the Bolivian Government was under pressure to open the economy in an election season. In response, the Bolivian Government shifted responsibility for most non-pharmaceutical interventions to departmental and municipal governments on June 1, 2020. The Bolivian Government maintained a mask mandate, school and border closures, and a nightly curfew, while allowing departmental and municipal governments to set workplace, social gathering, population mobility, and public transit policies. Daily deaths from COVID-19 increased markedly from 20 on June 1, 2020, to 96 on Aug 1, 2020. 1 Subnationally, the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in the wealthy, politically conservative department of Santa Cruz, followed by the poor, politically moderate department of Beni in May, 2020. These two departments maintained strict confinement policies in June, 2020, to manage outbreaks. Strict policies were also maintained in the wealthy, politically conservative department of Tarija, while the other six departments relaxed restrictions quickly in June, 2020, and subsequently a surge in cases was observed. In response to an increase in deaths in June and July, 2020, Chuquisaca and Cochabamba reinstated some restrictions and the other departments shifted to a policy of isolating municipalities with outbreaks. Daily deaths began to decline in August, 2020, decreasing to 35 per day by Sept 15, 2020. 1 We declare no competing interests.

Social accountability institutions are at the forefront of democratic reformers’ efforts to improve well‐being by harnessing the power of citizen participation. This article builds on recent research identifying a positive relationship between participatory budgeting (PB) and well‐being. The article is the first large‐N study to identify relationships between specific rules of PB programme design and well‐being. A unique dataset of 114 Brazilian municipalities with PB programmes from 2009 to 2016 is constructed to evaluate whether internal mechanisms within PB explain variation in local infant mortality rates – an outcome associated with wellbeing. Hypotheses are tested that correspond to citizen participation, the scope of deliberation and embeddedness within local institutions. It is found that PB programmes are associated with lower infant mortality rates when they broaden participation, expand deliberation and embed the new institutions in ongoing policy‐making venues. The results offer a framework for designing PB programmes and other social accountability institutions to maximise impact.

This chapter introduces the reader to PB’s core principles and basic institutional design. The core principles include voice, vote, social justice, social inclusion, and oversight. All PB programs adhere to these principles, but each program gives different weights to each principle, which helps to account for the differences in program design around the world. The chapter provides a detailed explanation of PB, based on the Porto Alegre model, which emerged as the early example that other governments sought to replicate. The chapter also introduces three guiding questions that shape the rest of the book: How has PB transformed during the past thirty years as it spreads around the globe? What are the causal mechanisms through which PB programs may produce social and political change? To what extent have PB programs actually generated this social and political change? The authors emphasize these questions as critical for advancing theoretical and empirical debates surrounding PB as well as participatory democratic institutions in general.