The Impact of Elections on Cooperation: Evidence from a Lab‐in‐the‐Field Experiment in Uganda

Abstract

Communities often rely on sanctioning to induce public goods contributions. Past studies focus on how external agencies or peer sanctioning induce cooperation. In this article, we focus instead on the role played by centralized authorities, internal to the community. Combining “lab-in-the-field” experiments with observational data on 1,541 Ugandan farmers from 50 communities, we demonstrate the positive effect of internal centralized sanctioning authorities on cooperative behavior. We also show that the size of this effect depends on the political process by which authority is granted: subjects electing leaders contribute more to public goods than subjects who were assigned leaders through a lottery. To test the ecological validity of our findings, we relate farmers’ behavior in the experiment to their level of cooperation in their community organization. We show that deference to authority in the controlled setting predicts cooperative behavior in the farmers’ natural environment, in which they face a similar social dilemma.

The Effect of Group Attachment and Social Position on Prosocial Behavior. Evidence from Lab-in-the-Field Experiments

“…We do so by comparing variation in prosocial behavior as a function of membership in overlapping groups , holding proximity constant across groups. Secondly, we mitigate the problem of weak external validity by conducting a series of lab-in-the-field experiments in rural Uganda with members of pre-existing groups [49], [50].…”

Farmer social networks: The role of advice ties and organizational leadership in agroforestry adoption

“…With leadership potentially affecting the performance of farmer groups and more of these groups undergoing democratization [ 11 , 28 , 30 , 31 ], we addressed the aforementioned research gap by examining the structures and implications of farmer advice networks on leadership outcomes. Based on the social networks literature, we developed two hypotheses.…”

“…Based on the organizational structure of such farmer groups, elected leaders can play pivotal roles in the resource flow on agroforestry [ 10 ]. Arguably, elected leaders wield legitimate power and recognized authority in disseminating information [ 11 ], thereby potentially determining the uptake or cessation of agroforestry. Through democratic decentralization, electoral processes frame the farmer group as an active site for legitimized negotiation of power, reinforcing informal advice ties as important factors in leadership selection [ 11 – 13 ].…”

A Theory of Institutional Congruence

“…66 Interview, February 13, 2017. 67 Although close ties with other elites can lead to collusion in non-electoral settings, Grossman and Baldassarri (2012) find that democratically elected leaders are more responsive to the welfare needs of constituents. Similar effects of elections have been found in Liberia (Baldwin 2015).…”