Elections and Deceptions: An Experimental Study on the Behavioral Effects of Democracy

Traditionally, the virtue of democratic elections has been seen in their role as means of screening and sanctioning shirking public officials. This article proposes a novel rationale for elections and political campaigns considering that candidates incur psychological costs of lying, in particular from breaking campaign promises. These nonpecuniary costs imply that campaigns influence subsequent behavior, even in the absence of reputational or image concerns. Our lab experiments reveal that promises are more than cheap talk. They influence the behavior of both voters and their representatives. We observe that the electorate is better off when their leaders are elected democratically rather than being appointed exogenously—but only in the presence of electoral campaigns. In addition, we find that representatives are more likely to serve the public interest when their approval rates are high. Altogether, our results suggest that elections and campaigns confer important benefits beyond their screening and sanctioning functions.     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Ghana: Perspectives from Path Dependency and Punctuated Equilibrium Theories

Since 1957, various Ghanaian governments have made, and continue to make, attempts to reform the administrative state for development. In spite of this, not much seems to have been achieved over the years. Why has the passion of successive governments for reforming the administrative system failed to yield the desired outcomes? What is the nexus between regime turnover and frequent administrative reforms? Where do we want to go, and what will take us there or at least close to our intended destination? What approach is likely to maximize the chances of success and minimize those of failure? We argue that administrative reforms in Ghana have been consistently undermined by the discontinuity of reform initiatives undertaken by successive governments; the inability to have a “national agenda for development”; continuous reliance on expatriates as consultants and advisers; over-reliance on multinational institutions for financial support; and by the absence of a “developmental state.”     

Institutions and savings in developing and emerging economies

Domestic savings are an important prerequisite for capital formation and growth. In this paper we analyze a new channel through which institutions influence aggregate savings and economic development. Whereas research in the field of savings decisions concentrates largely on the level of the individual, the literature on institutions and growth as well as on aggregate savings formation focuses on the aggregate, national level. First, we develop a framework that brings together both lines of reasoning, arguing that institutions may influence the individual savings decision as well as national savings in aggregate. This potential for institutional quality to influence economic performance has been neglected so far. Second, we build upon the empirical literature on aggregate savings formation and provide results supporting our hypothesis that better economic institutions drive aggregate savings formation upwards. By contrast, we do not find such effects in the case of the political environment. Our findings are robust when checked against a number of changes in explanatory variables, estimation methods and the treatment of instruments.     

Global Development and Colonial Power: German Development Policy at Home and Abroad

The Oxford History of South Africa, Volume II, 1870–1966. Edited by Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, Oxford University Press, London. 1971. Pp. xvi + 584. Index, bibliog., figs. £5.

Developing the Third World. The Experience of the Nineteen Sixties. Ronald Robinson (ed.) Cambridge University Press, London. 1971. Pp. x + 290. £4.20.

Public Finances in Malaya and Singapore. By C. T. Edwards. Australian National University Press. 1970. Pp. xi + 386. Index. $10.00 (Australian).

Productivity and Factor Proportions in Less Developed Countries. The Case of Industrial Firms in the Congo. By J. Gouverneur. Oxford University Press, London. 1970. Pp. xvii + 171. No Index. £2.50.

Technological Growth and Social Change: Achieving Modernization. By Stanley A. Hetzler. Routledge and Kegan Paul (International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction), London. 1969. Pp. x + 302. £2.25.

Planning Development. By Keith B. Griffin and John L. Enos, Addison‐Wesley Publishing Company London. 1970. Pp. xiii+262. £2.10.

Agricultural Problems: Some Technical Aspects. Nguyen Khac Vien (ed.). Vietnamese Studies Series, Hanoi. 1971. Pp. 286 (English edition). No price.

East Africa: its Peoples and Resources. W. T. W. Morgan (ed.). Oxford U.P., Nairobi. 1969. Pp. 312, 28 plates, 7 endpaper maps. £6.00 in U.K.

African Food Production Systems. Cases and Theory. P. F. M. McLoughlin (ed.). The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. 1970. Pp. x + 318. Index. £4.75.

Turkish Economic, Social and Political Change. By Edwin J. Cohn. Praeger Special Studies. 1970. Pp. xiv + 185. £5.25.

Growth and Choice: Essays in Honour of U.N. Ghosal. Tapas Majumdar (ed.). Oxford University Press, London. 1970. Pp. xiv + 104. No Index. £1.70.     

Welfare Dynamics in Pakistan and Ethiopia – Does the Estimation Method Matter?

Identifying household-level welfare dynamics and associated dynamic poverty trap thresholds can have important implications for the targeting of poverty reduction policies. The small existing empirical microeconomic literature has found evidence both for and against poverty traps. Using household panel data from rural Pakistan and Ethiopia, this article examines whether these different results are likely driven by differences in estimation methods or whether they reflect actual differences across settings. It applies the estimation methods from the existing literature to the same two datasets and also proposes a novel semiparametric panel data estimator that combines the advantages of the previous fully parametric and nonparametric approaches. The results suggest that absent any dynamic poverty trap thresholds the effect of using different estimation methods is secondary, having a small influence on the estimated long-term level of household well-being but not the identification of multiple dynamic welfare equilibria and associated dynamic poverty thresholds. Households in rural Pakistan and Ethiopia seem to be stuck in a static, structural-type poverty trap facing an expected level of long-term well-being that places them squarely in poverty.     

China's Continuous Dam-building on the Mekong River

This article analyses China's hydro-politics along the Mekong River. It seeks to explain why China's unilateral dam-building projects on the upper reaches of the river have not been met with sustained criticism on the part of the downstream riparian countries, for which upstream dams are likely to have severe negative consequences. It is held that China has embarked on a strategy of implicit and broadly conceived actor-reversed issue linkage as a means to nip any loud disapproval of its dams in the bud. By downplaying its dam-building projects and instead promoting common development goals with the Mekong riparian countries through highly increased political and economic engagement, Beijing has successfully defused any potential counter-measures against its dams, at least for the time being. The sustainability of this strategy and its transferability to others of China's trans-boundary rivers must be questioned.     

Disentangling the Role of Ideology and Partisanship in Legislative Voting: Evidence from Argentina

We present a novel approach to disentangle the effects of ideology, partisanship, and constituency pressures on roll‐call voting. First, we place voters and legislators on a common ideological space. Next, we use roll‐call data to identify the partisan influence on legislators' behavior. Finally, we use a structural equation model to account for these separate effects on legislative voting. We rely on public opinion data and a survey of Argentine legislators conducted in 2007–08. Our findings indicate that partisanship is the most important determinant of legislative voting, leaving little room for personal ideological position to affect legislators' behavior.