Participatory accountability and collective action: Experimental evidence from Albania

Abstract

Participatory accountability is often advocated as the solution to deficient top-down accountability systems. However, the evidence on the effectiveness of participatory accountability institutions is mixed and the reasons behind the contrasting results produced by the literature are unclear. We argue that the mixed evidence could be owing at least partly to heterogeneities in individuals' willingness and ability to overcome collective action problems. We investigate whether individuals' propensity to cooperate with others for the common good plays a role in their decisions to participate in both a school accountability system -i.e., a "short route" to accountability -and parliamentary electionsi.e., a "long route" to accountability. We combine survey data on 1800 individuals' participation decisions with measures of their willingness to contribute to a public good in the context of a very simple, clearly defined laboratory experiment. We conduct our study in a new democracy, Albania, involving a representative sample of parents of children enrolled in primary schools. Our findings confirm that, both across individuals within communities and across communities, cooperativeness in a simple public goods game correlates with both the decisions to participate in holding teachers and school directors accountable via school-level institutions and the decision to participate in holding all public servants to account via national elections.JEL CODES: C93, D72, H4, O12

Normative foundations of human cooperation

“…An important question is how insights gained in lab experiments relate to behavior in naturally occurring environments. Several studies [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] demonstrate that individuals' behavior in the lab is predictive of their behavior in relevant field settings. For instance, people who tend to contribute more in public good games are more likely to participate in local and national accountability institutions 43 .…”

The Churches' Bans on Consanguineous Marriages, Kin-Networks and Democracy

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Prenatal Temperature Shocks Reduce Cooperation: Evidence from Public Goods Games in Uganda

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