Metaketa I: Information and Accountability

Metaketa I Project Locations

Civil society groups emphasize the need for high quality public information on the performance of politicians. But, does information really make a difference in institutionally weak environments? Does it lead to the rewarding of good performance at the polls or are voting decisions going to be dominated by ethnic ties and clientelistic relations? The Information and Accountability Metaketa seeks to answer these questions by implementing a series of experimental projects that assess the role of information in promoting political accountability in developing countries. 

This Metaketa round was launched in Fall 2013 and will run until Fall 2018. This round awarded seven projects—one each in Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, India, and Mexico, and two in Uganda—ranging in funding from $175,000 to $300,000. All of the projects, which have now been completed, used common informational interventions to assess the impact of providing voters with information about politician performance. In addition, each involved at least one complementary intervention. In this round, many projects compared the effects of providing information to individual voters (first arm) with the effects of providing information collectively to groups of voters (second arm). Individual academic papers and policy briefs, as well as a co-authored book and article that present results from the distinct studies in an integrated analysis are forthcoming. For additional information about the Metaketa Initiative, contact Jaclyn Leaver (EGAP Director of Research) at jleaver@berkeley.edu. 

Metaketa I Steering Committee: Thad Dunning (chair, UC Berkeley); Guy Grossman (U Penn); Macartan Humphreys (Columbia University); Susan Hyde (UC Berkeley); and Craig McIntosh (UCSD) 

Metaketa I Meta-Analysis Pre-Analysis Plan: 20150309AA
Benin Pre-Analysis Plan: 20150308AA
Brazil Pre-Analysis Plan: 20151118AA
Burkina Faso Pre-Analysis Plan: 20151120AA
India Pre-Analysis Plan: 20150925AA
Mexico Pre-Analysis Plan: 20150517AA
Uganda I Pre-Analysis Plan: 20150820AA
Uganda II Pre-Analysis Plan: 20151119AA

Evidence Summit (June 2017) Pre-Analysis Plan: 20170609AB

Metaketa I Projects

• Can common knowledge improve common goods?
  Location: Benin
  Principal Investigators: Claire Adida (UCSD), Jessica Gottlieb (Texas A&M University), Eric Kramon (GWU), and Gwyneth McClendon (NYU)
   
• Accountability and incumbent performance in the Brazilian Northeast
  Location: Brazil
  Principal Investigators: Taylor Boas (Boston University), F. Daniel Hidalgo (MIT), and Marcus Melo (Federal University of Pernambuco)
   
• Citizens at the council: Comparing the impact of mediated information and first-hand experience on voter turnout in municipal elections
  Location: Burkina Faso
  Principal Investigators: Marcus Holmlund (The World Bank) and Malte Lierl (German Institute for Global and Area Studies)
   
• Using local networks to increase accountability
  Location: India
  Principal Investigators: Simon Chauchard (Dartmouth College) and Neelanjan Sircar (Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi)
   
• Common knowledge, relative performance, and political accountability
  Location: Mexico
  Principal Investigators: Eric Arias (Princeton), Horacio Larreguy (Harvard), John Marshall (Columbia), and Pablo Querubin (NYU)  
   
• Meet the candidates: Information and accountability in primary and general elections
  Location: Uganda
  Principal Investigators: Melina Platas (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Pia Raffler (Harvard)
   
• Repairing information underload
  Location: Uganda
  Principal Investigators: Mark Buntaine (UCSB), Sarah Bush (Temple University), Ryan Jablonski (LSE), Daniel Nielson (BYU), and Paula Pickering (College of William and Mary)

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