EXPERT INFORMATION, PUBLIC DELIBERATION AND ELECTORAL SUPPORT FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM BENIN

5. What to be done? Take advantage of advances in liberal democracy and improved political autonomy of civil society to push for institutional change that allows for more �public deliberation� over policy choice and better use of expert policy information generated by academics and development agencies. Why? Public deliberation informed by �serious� policy research can help improve civic engagement, and electoral support for �good� governance, hence make selection and implementation of �good� policies more likely.

6. Evidence: political experiments in Benin (2001 and 2006) Goal of the 2001 experiment: test effectiveness of clientelistic/targeted redistribution vs. programmatic/broad public policy campaigns on voting Experiment: randomized trial � 24 villages in total � politicians used either clientelistic or programmatic or neutral election campaign. First ever electoral experiment involving real candidates competing in real elections. The candidates: Kerekou, Soglo, Lafia. Amoussou.

7. Programmatic Treatment Example of ��broad policy� message: �We are the representatives of candidate Saka Lafia, who is running for president in the March 3, 2001 election...If elected, he will engage in a nationwide reform of the education and health care system with emphasis on building new schools, new hospitals, and vaccination campaigns. In conjunction with other opposition leaders, he will fight corruption and promote peace between all ethnic groups and all the regions of Benin. �

8. Clientelist Treatment Example of ��clientelist� message: � We are the representatives of candidate Saka Lafia, who is running for president in the March 3, 2001 election. As you know, Saka is the only Bariba candidate....,. Saka is running because the northeast region, Borgou-Alibori,is very underdeveloped: low literacy rates, poor rural infrastructure and health care, etc. If elected, he will help promote the interests of the Borgou-Alibori region, by building new schools, hospitals, and roads and more importantly, hiring more Bariba people in the public administration. �

9. Political Experiment in Benin (2001) Result: the clientelistic election campaign is more effective the programmatic election campaign costs votes by relatively effective among women, co-ethnics and more informed voters. Does this mean that clientelism is the only effective election campaign strategy? Programmatic campaign was too vague, and opaque! How about using a specific, informed programmatic/broad public policy electoral messages? What if those messages were generated through public deliberation?

10. Political Experiment in Benin (2006) Goal: test experimentally the combined effect of deliberation and expert information on turnout and voting behavior in REAL elections Context: The first round of the March 2006 election in Benin. Design of the experiment: Step 1: Public deliberation: a policy conference involving academics, political parties and civil society organizations, development agencies. Step 2: 6 major parties integrate the results of the policy conference into their campaign in randomly selected villages. Town meetings in treatment villages to discuss �specific� and �informed� campaign promises, led by activists and research assistants.

11. Pictures of the Policy Conference: December 22, 2005

16. Training Campaign Activists

17. Training Campaign Activists February 2006

19. Town Meetings in Oueme and Borgou February 2006

22. The 2006 Benin Experiment Outcome measures: voter turnout, voting results and trust in the candidate Sample: a representative sample of voters in the treated villages and non-treated villages. Results: The treatment has a positive and highly significant effect on turnout, voting and trust in the candidate.

25. Implications Politicians can get more votes and be more trustworthy by making very specific and informed policy promises. Policy targeting (clientelism) and policy specificity can be substitutes. Politicians can (at least to some degree) overcome the need for distributing favors to win votes, by improving the extent to which their electoral promises are informed by empirical policy research.

26. Implications Politicians can get more votes and be more trustworthy by making very specific and informed policy promises. Policy targeting (clientelism) and policy specificity can be substitutes. Politicians can (at least to some degree) overcome the need for distributing favors to win votes, by improving the extent to which their electoral promises are informed by empirical policy research.

27. Contribution 1 Political Ignorance in American Politics: Increased political knowledge and policy information affect policy preferences, and voting behavior. Bartels [1996], Delli Carpini and Keeter [1996], Althaus [1998] and Gilens [2001] BUT: Results are based on US data: It is unclear if the information effect would transcend ethnic or religious cleavages and low level of formal education in the context of developing countries

28. Contribution 2 Public deliberation promotes "enlightment", consensus, and civic engagement. See Guttman and Thompson [1997] and Fishkin [1997] among others. BUT the literature is mostly theoretical. Evidence provided in deliberative polls are from focus groups not from the field. So we don't know how policy information provided in the context of public deliberation would affect voting behavior in real

29. Contribution 3 Direct elections are better than representative-based meetings in generating popular satisfaction and support for local public goods (Olken [2008]) Media Access reduces local capture of public funds and subsquently leads to higher enrollment and test scores. (Reinnika and Svensson [2005] BUT: these studies focus on local public goods and ignore political incentives at national level.

30. Proposal for an institutional reform Every African country needs a permanent and independent academic type institution (council of experts) to advise and assist political parties, government in designing and evaluating policies, in setting development priorities. A bit like IPCC, but different focus. A bit like Brookings and NBER but broader focus and mandate. Certainly not the Iranian �Council of Experts�, a religious council that stands above government. The need for such an institution is even stronger in resource rich countries such as Nigeria, where the demand for transparency, and deliberation is very high

31. Concluding Remarks Knowledge of political incentives is crucial in generating coexistence between democracy and good governance. Build local technical expertise in economics and management. Encourage local ownership of development agenda / strategy.