Low Transparency of Politician Performance

Yet politicians’ job duties and performance are mostly obscure to citizens. Thus, citizens tend to discipline and reward incumbents based on noisy heuristics, which might poorly correspond to politicians’ performance of their job duties, if at all (Ashworth Reference Ashworth2012). In response, politicians often skew efforts away from their statutory job duties and focus instead on catering to such heuristics—to the detriment of citizen welfare (Fox and Shotts Reference Fox and Shotts2009).

First, especially in low-income countries, citizens often hold politicians accountable for the receipt of personal clientelistic handouts, which are visible and attributable to individual politicians (Kitschelt and Wilkinson Reference Kitschelt and Wilkinson2007). Although distributing private goods is not part of their legally defined job duties, politicians typically succumb to demands for such handouts, and most feel that they are held accountable for delivering them (Lindberg Reference Lindberg2010). Clientelistic handouts are normatively problematic (Stokes et al. Reference Stokes, Dunning, Nazareno and Brusco2013) but also expensive, motivating politicians to engage in corruption (Hicken Reference Hicken2011).

Second, citizens may use public service delivery outcomes (e.g., school construction, paved roads) to proxy for legislators’ performance. However, service delivery in a given constituency generally cannot be attributed to the efforts of a single legislator: it results from the actions and interactions of multiple actors who are not necessarily under the legislator’s control (Kosack and Fung Reference Kosack and Fung2014).Footnote ¹ Political accountability is weakened when the electorate holds politicians accountable for outcomes that are neither under their mandate nor their direct control (Ashworth Reference Ashworth2012). Moreover, when citizens use public service delivery outcomes to discipline officials in the few areas in which outcomes are visible and attributable to individual elected officials (Harding Reference Harding2015; Berry and Howell Reference Berry and Howell2007), incumbents may suboptimally skew efforts away from less visible and attributable (but vitally important) job duties (Bueno De Mesquita Reference Bueno De Mesquita2007).

Taken together, accountability models underscore that the more limited citizens’ information about politicians’ performance is, the more politicians shirk their responsibilities—and the more citizen welfare is reduced (Fearon Reference Fearon, Przeworski, Stokes and Manin1999). To address the lack of information about politicians’ job duty performance, theorists envision a prominent role for civil society, including the media, to inform citizens about incumbents’ performance (Diamond Reference Diamond1994). Indeed, past studies find that the presence of more media outlets is associated with improved politician performance of their job duties, presumably by increasing transparency (Besley and Burgess Reference Besley and Burgess2002; Snyder and Strömberg Reference Snyder and Strömberg2010). However, we know little about the effect of targeted CSO politician performance transparency initiatives in improving subsequent politician performance in newly democratizing country settings.

Conditions under Which CSO Performance Transparency Initiatives Work

To get reelected, incumbents shift efforts toward fulfilling the performance criteria they anticipate citizens will use to evaluate them (Fox and Shotts Reference Fox and Shotts2009). A CSO initiative to disseminate politician performance information has the potential to shift the evaluative criteria citizens use to discipline politicians either in upcoming elections (Lindberg Reference Lindberg2013) or through social sanctioning (Tsai Reference Tsai2007). Indeed, the salience of political information for citizen attitudes is malleable: powerful rhetoric, framing, and marketing can greatly affect it (Huber, Hill, and Lenz Reference Huber, Hill and Lenz2012). Next, we discuss six conditions under which transparency initiatives are more likely to induce politicians to improve their performance in anticipation of (possible) citizen sanctioning based on job duty performance.

First, for a CSO’s scrutiny of politician performance to be effective, both politicians and citizens must accept its role. Both must believe that the CSO and the information it disseminates are impartial, accurate, and thus trustworthy. Politicians will seek to derail transparency initiatives that they believe are biased, and citizens will ignore political information they deem unreliable (Humphreys and Weinstein Reference Humphreys and Weinstein2012).

Second, politicians must believe that the disseminated information is salient for citizens to use as evaluative criteria (Lieberman, Posner, and Tsai Reference Lieberman, Posner and Tsai2014). Citizens, especially in low-income settings, may not perceive politician performance information as salient if they do not understand politicians’ job duties and how those translate into government outcomes. Disseminated performance information should therefore be contextualized as part of general civic education efforts (Chong et al. Reference Chong, Ana, Karlan and Wantchekon2015; Adida et al. Reference Adida, Gottlieb, Kramon and McClendon2016).

Third, politicians may not fear future citizen sanctioning unless they believe their constituents can commonly identify what constitutes an acceptable threshold of job performance. When there is little consensus regarding performance standards, initiatives have found it to be effective to benchmark politician performance information relative to other incumbents (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb2016) or challenger candidates (Bidwell, Casey, and Glennerster Reference Bidwell, Casey and Glennerster2017).

Fourth, politicians are unlikely to improve their performance in anticipation of citizen sanctioning unless they believe that a sufficient number of citizens will use such information to inform their vote. Indeed, citizens may be unlikely to sanction politicians based on job duty performance if they think most other constituents continue to base their vote on other evaluative criteria (Chwe Reference Chwe2013). Therefore to facilitate voter coordination, transparency initiatives should disseminate information publicly (Bidwell, Casey, and Glennerster Reference Bidwell, Casey and Glennerster2017) and strive to reach as large a share of the constituency as possible (Adida et al. Reference Adida, Gottlieb, Kramon and McClendon2016).

Fifth, seminal accountability theories hold that principals and agents must have common knowledge of criteria for accountable behavior, and measurable evidence regarding the degree to which such criteria are fulfilled (Lindberg Reference Lindberg2013). Of course, a CSO must inform incumbents of transparency initiatives, or else politicians cannot be expected to know they should refocus their efforts in anticipation of possible citizen sanctioning. Citizens may also raise their expectations of politicians’ performance between elections when a common knowledge exists about their elected representative being regularly assessed. Raising citizens’ expectations of politicians’ performance facilitates sanctioning of underperforming incumbents (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb2016).

Finally, the timing in the electoral cycle of a CSO’s information dissemination campaign matters. We argue that disseminating political information well in advance of the next election increases the likelihood that politicians will improve their performance. At a minimum, disseminating such information close to elections does not give politicians adequate opportunity to improve their performance in anticipation of citizen sanctioning. Instead, incumbents may respond to negative information by increasing vote buying (Cruz, Keefer, and Labonne Reference Cruz, Keefer and Labonne2017) or vote rigging and intimidation (Collier and Vicente Reference Collier and Vicente2012).

Furthermore, incumbent performance information disseminated early in an electoral term increases the pressure on incumbents to perform to deter the entry of new challengers. A CSO transparency initiative helps potential challengers identify weak incumbents; it also subsidizes challengers’ campaigns to unseat poor performers, because nonpartisan CSO-generated information is more credible than statements regarding incumbent performance made by the incumbents or challengers themselves. Given the time it takes to mount viable campaigns—especially in low-income newly democratizing countries where the opposition is cash strapped and campaigns are mostly self-financed—transparency initiatives early on in the electoral cycle are more likely to pressure low-performing incumbents in anticipation of challenger entry, which we discuss in more detail below.

Yet incumbents might ignore CSO transparency initiatives early in the electoral term, perhaps because they expect citizens to only focus on their performance directly prior to an election (Healy and Lenz Reference Healy and Lenz2014). However, such “end year” effects are arguably more relevant in high-income settings, where citizens are inundated with political information and may thus act on the basis of the most recently obtained information. In low-income contexts, politician performance information is scant: a CSO transparency initiative early in the term can critically shape a politician’s reputation. Incumbents may worry that once they develop a bad reputation, citizen perceptions of them would be hard to change, for example due to affirmation bias (Redlawsk, Civettini, and Emmerson Reference Redlawsk, Civettini and Emmerson2010). Further, a transparency campaign early in the term could also powerfully shape the type of performance criteria politicians expect citizens to utilize (Huber, Hill, and Lenz Reference Huber, Hill and Lenz2012).

Contextual Conditions for Transparency

Without a ready pool of viable challengers, citizens cannot credibly threaten to remove incumbents (Gordon and Huber Reference Gordon and Huber2007). Indeed, much of the formal accountability literature examining the effect of transparency on citizens’ behavior assumes that there are viable challengers available to replace poorly performing incumbents (Ashworth Reference Ashworth2012). However, in practice, many elections lack credible challengers, even in advanced democracies (Cox and Katz Reference Cox and Katz1996). Incumbents from “safe” constituencies may therefore reasonably conclude that even if the electorate becomes more informed about their poor performance, it will have minimal effect on their ability to retain their seat. Consistent with this expectation, past empirical work finds that where challengers exert greater electoral pressure—i.e., in competitive constituencies—reelection-seeking incumbents perform significantly better [e.g., Beazer (Reference Beazer2015)].

For political transparency initiatives to induce politicians to perform, therefore, a minimum threshold of political competition may be required. We argue that the fear of future challenger entry disciplines incumbents. While we have underscored that transparency initiatives early in an electoral term may facilitate candidate entry (Ashworth and Shotts Reference Ashworth and Shotts2015), it is more difficult for candidates to enter where the opposition has little presence. In electoral authoritarian settings, where opposition parties are resource constrained and weakly institutionalized, candidates and parties are especially strategic about where they compete. Thus, while all incumbents may fear new challengers, this threat is arguably more acute in historically competitive constituencies where opposition parties already have an infrastructure in place. We thus expect transparency initiatives to have a greater effect on subsequent incumbent performance in competitive constituencies.

Further, politicians may be concerned about social in addition to electoral sanctioning. When local politicians are embedded in solidary groups (for example, ethnic and religious groups), their reputation affects their standing in their community (Tsai Reference Tsai2007). Politicians who do not meet their group’s expectations face losing moral standing, whereas those performing well enjoy prestige. One testable implication of this logic is that politicians’ response to a CSO transparency initiative should be stronger when incumbents are embedded in more socially homogenous constituencies, regardless of the timing in the electoral cycle or the competitiveness of elections.

District Local Governments in Uganda

Uganda is an electoral authoritarian regime, the most common regime type for low-income countries globally and the modal regime type in Sub-Saharan Africa (Weghorst Reference Weghorst2015). The National Resistance Movement (NRM) has been in control of the national executive and legislature since 1986. Multiparty elections were introduced for the 2006 general elections. Our study takes place between the second and third multiparty elections in 2011 and 2016, respectively.

The record of Uganda’s political liberalization process, led by president Museveni, has been mixed (Tripp Reference Tripp2010), representing a broad regional trend in which liberalization reforms are enacted, but leaders secure their tenure in part by restricting political competition (Ochieng’ Opalo Reference Ochieng’ Opalo2012). Uganda has long been heralded as a “donor darling” among low-income countries, and Museveni’s pursuit of structural adjustment reforms has helped secure significant aid flows. While corruption scandals abound, public service delivery in Uganda and citizen welfare have undoubtedly improved in the past three decades. Many argue that the donor community is helping Museveni further entrench his power by supporting budgetary priorities that nourish his patronage networks (Green Reference Green2010), and by allowing him to take credit for improved service delivery provided by donor funds (Mwenda and Tangri Reference Mwenda and Tangri2005). While Museveni has not resorted to the types of ballot rigging used by some neighboring countries, he has nonetheless created an uneven playing field for opposition parties, mainly by intimidating opponents and creating an elaborate patronage network (Tripp Reference Tripp2010).

Under Museveni, the media and civil society enjoy relative freedom, at least compared to regional benchmarks. Indeed, the NRM has been known to accept a wide array of public criticism and grassroots mobilization around contentious issues—as long as these efforts fall short of directly attacking the president, his senior associates and his family. When that line is crossed, the NRM does not hesitate to use state power to quell critics (Tangri and Mwenda Reference Tangri and Mwenda2001). However, politics at the subnational level, where the political stakes are lower, tends to be freer of NRM entrenchment (Nsibambi Reference Nsibambi1998).

Uganda has three local government tiers: district (LC5), subcounty (LC3), and village (LC1). District governments are comprised of sectoral offices and an elected legislative body, the district council. Bureaucrats (called “technocrats” in Uganda) are chiefly responsible for implementing public services and projects according to the budget and work plan developed annually via collaboration between the technocratic and political branches and approved by the district council. District councils have the power to make laws (unless they conflict with the constitution), regulate and monitor public service delivery, formulate comprehensive development plans based on local priorities, and supervise the district bureaucracy (Grossman and Lewis Reference Grossman and Lewis2014).

The Local Government Act (1997) stipulates four areas of legally defined duties for elected representatives to the district council (“councilors”): legislative (e.g., passing motions in plenary, committee work), lower-level local government participation (e.g., attending LC1 and LC3 meetings), contact with the electorate (e.g., meeting with constituents, setting up an office), and monitoring (but not directly implementing) public service delivery to ensure service delivery standards are met. There are two main types of politicians serving on the district council, which we incorporate into our randomization scheme. In 2006, Uganda mandated that at least one-third of politicians were female. To achieve this goal, so-called “special woman councilor” constituencies, in which only female candidates can compete, were overlaid on top of “regular” subcounty constituencies. Special woman councilor constituencies encompass between one and three subcounties, depending on the population size. Thus, citizens are represented by two politicians: a (usually male) “regular councilor” and a (female) “special woman councilor,” who may also represent up to two additional subcounties.

In the study area, there are 149 special woman councilors and 247 regular councilors; 72% of politicians caucus with the NRM [Supplementary Material (SI), Table 2]. Notably, the share of NRM politicians varies across districts, from as low as about 20% of politicians from the NRM (in Lira) to 100% in Kanungu and Ntungamo (SI, Figure 1). The majority of politicians (53%) are serving their first term.

To be competitive, many Ugandan politicians distribute personal handouts. About two-thirds of politicians surveyed for this study reported spending an average of more than 2 million Ugandan shillings (600 USD)—an amount close to the country’s per capita GDP of 615 USD—on personal gifts during the 2011 election campaign. Performing their legally defined duties is not only less expensive for incumbents than handouts; it is also an evaluative criterion that is unavailable to challengers. Thus, shifting citizens’ criteria to legally defined duty performance should be attractive to (at least high-performance) politicians, especially in competitive constituencies where campaign costs run significantly higher.Footnote ³

Standard Activities: Performance Scorecard Initiative

In 2009, ACODE launched the Local Government Councilor Scorecard Initiative in consultation with various local stakeholders—including the Ministry of Local Governments, Uganda Local Government Association, district officials, and other governance CSOs—to improve district politicians’ performance of their legally defined duties as stipulated in the Local Government Act (1997). By training district councilors on these duties and generating information about their performance, ACODE seeks to improve politicians’ capacity to fulfill their responsibilities.

At the beginning of the legislative term (Spring 2011), ACODE conducted training sessions for all politicians in the study area. These sessions discussed councilors’ legally defined duties, offered advice on how best to fulfill these duties, provided politicians with useful tools (e.g., planners, monitoring checklists), and described the yearly scorecard. Table 1 details the scorecard components and their respective weights. The total score ranges from 0 to 100, mirroring conventional Ugandan school grading. ACODE researchers collect the underlying data to produce the scorecard annually in reference to the previous financial year (July to June). Importantly, the scorecard is based solely on administrative data rather than citizen attitudes. Once the scorecards are complete and vetted for quality control purposes (around September), ACODE disseminates them in district plenary meetings attended by district politicians, key bureaucrats, and party officials (every October-November).

TABLE 1.

ACODE Scorecard

ACODE activities, summarized in Table 2 in light grey, are salient to politicians. At baseline, 96% knew about the program, and over 80% could name their latest score within ten points at endline. Importantly, the initiative is also well received by politicians, who generally view ACODE as unbiased and its scorecard as reliable. Tellingly, 94% of politicians recommended that the scorecard initiative should be scaled up throughout the country (SI, Section 2.5).

TABLE 2.

ACODE Activities in the Study Area

Note: Activities conducted throughout the study area in gray; those conducted only in treatment areas in black.

The Intensive Dissemination Program

This study examines the effect of ACODE’s ID program to disseminate information about politicians’ performance to their constituents in the middle of the electoral term. ACODE implemented the ID program in consultation with the research team in two rounds of parish-level community meetings held in treated constituencies. The first set of meetings took place in fall 2013 (354 meetings; 12,949 attendees) and the second in fall 2014 (339 meetings; 14,520 attendees).

As mentioned, ACODE conducts professionalization activities and releases the scorecard annually at the district level in plenums attended by political elites. Thus the ID treatment captures the effect of the scorecard on citizens above and beyond ACODE’s standard activities. The ID treatment isolates the effect of pressure on politicians from anticipated citizen responses and fear of future challenger entry beyond intrinsic, peer, or party pressure. Below we discuss the ID program treatment components, summarized in Table 2 in bold.

Meeting Recruitment. On average, 40 community members attended each meeting. Although open to the public, ACODE especially mobilized local leaders, targeting lower-tier government officials, religious leaders, service providers, and civil society (e.g., women’s and youth groups). Local leaders were intended to act as initial nodes in a wider dissemination process to other community members. To that end, meeting attendees were given fliers, posters, and calendars with a summary of the disseminated information to hang up in prominent public places (Figure 2).

FIGURE 2.

Calendar Example

Meeting Content. Following our theoretical framework, dissemination meetings included a civic education module in which ACODE demonstrated how councilors’ actions contribute to public services delivery. ACODE provided information on politicians’ job duties, national and district government responsibilities, and legally defined service delivery standards. Then, ACODE disseminated politician scores benchmarked against all other district politicians’ scores. ACODE also collected attendees’ cell phone numbers and subsequently sent out periodic text messages reinforcing key information delivered at meetings (SI, Table 7). The research team deployed enumerators to the community meetings to track implementation compliance and to conduct a short poll with randomly selected participants to test for content comprehension and retention. In the SI (Section 2.6), we demonstrate that the meetings were successful in fulfilling their stated goals.

We use a pretreatment citizen survey, conducted in 2012, to demonstrate that the information ACODE disseminated to constituents was both new and salient. Only 9% of survey respondents at baseline reported hearing at least “something” about the scorecard initiative.Footnote ⁴ When asked to evaluate their politicians’ performance across the four domains of job duties, respondents’ evaluations did not correlate with the 2011–2012 scores (SI, Figure 7). Moreover, constituents’ priors were diffuse: a majority of respondents reported that they could not assess their politicians’ job duty performance. Further, citizens at baseline knew little about politicians’ legally defined duties. For example, 41% of respondents asserted that paying personal handouts was a legal responsibility, while 50% viewed private transfers as a de facto, if not a de jure, job duty.

The scorecard information was also salient: the activities reported by citizens as their main priority for politicians are highly correlated with their legally defined duties, and thus scorecard indicators (SI, Figure 8 and Section 2.7). The most important duty cited by a plurality of survey respondents was visiting schools and health centers (i.e., “monitoring services”), followed by regularly visiting villages (“contact with the electorate”), participating in council sessions and committees (“legislative” role), and providing assistance to communities and participating in LC3 and LC1 meetings (“lower-level local government participation”).

Treating Politicians. ACODE invited treated politicians to all dissemination meetings in their constituency and informed them of the meetings’ content. Politicians were also notified (via text message) whenever scorecard information was shared with constituents via text message (SI, Table 8). Therefore, the scorecard dissemination was common knowledge to citizens and politicians. The results from an endline survey conducted with all study area politicians suggests that politicians were successfully treated (SI, Section 2.8). Three years after treatment assignment, treated politicians were significantly more likely than control politicians to report that a large share of their constituents was aware of their score (50% and 37%, respectively). This result is consistent with our theoretical assumption that incumbents believe that “weak dissemination” efforts generate a noisier signal to constituents about their performance than the ID program.

Data and Measurement

In addition to using ACODE’s scorecard as an outcome, we also collected data on other measures of politician performance. We measure politicians’ peer evaluations and bureaucrats’ assessments, which capture what district officials—rather than the CSO—consider to be high-level performance. Politicians and bureaucrats may use different dimensions than ACODE or assign different weights in evaluating performance. We also implemented a unique exercise—a school improvement grant—to provide a behavioral measure of politicians’ efforts to improve constituents’ welfare that is separate from their ACODE scores. See SI, Section 3 for further information on those outcomes, including distribution plots of the raw data.

Performance Scorecard. Our first outcome measure is politicians’ scores on ACODE’s scorecard. The first scorecard (2011–2012) captures performance prior to treatment assignment, and subsequent scorecards (2012–2013, 2013–2014, 2014–2015) capture posttreatment performance.Footnote ⁵ We focus on the treatment effect on the total score, but also report treatment effects on the scorecard’s four subcomponents. In the baseline 2011–2012 scorecard, the mean total score is 46 out of 100 (range 10 to 87), allowing politicians ample room for improvement.

Politicians’ Peer Evaluations. Our second outcome is performance evaluations elicited from fellow district politicians. All politicians were interviewed in person at endline, and were asked to evaluate, on a five-point scale, five randomly selected peers based on what they considered to be the most relevant performance dimensions. Since this design produced three to seven ratings for each politician, we averaged all peer assessments to create a single mean peer evaluation score.

Bureaucrats’ Assessments. We constructed a performance measure using the ratings of district bureaucrats, who have unique insight into politicians’ efforts and effectiveness in their job duties. Several activities that politicians undertake—e.g., writing reports or lobbying for targeted projects—require contact with the district offices responsible for delivering public services. Data for this measure was collected via in-person interviews with key technocrats in health, education, and general administration offices. Bureaucrats were asked to assess politicians along four performance dimensions, using a five-point scale. We averaged the ratings on these dimensions across surveyed bureaucrats to create a single composite index (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91).

School Grant Applications. We implemented an original behavioral task that allowed us to test whether the transparency initiative can increase politicians’ broader efforts—under their direct control—to improve citizen welfare, even if those actions are “off the scorecard.” In fall 2015, all district councilors in the study area were informed of a grant program that was funded by the research team. Politicians were given the opportunity to help primary schools in their constituency apply for a small (about U.S. $100) grant to support school improvements. Grant applications involved mobilizing the school principal and PTA chair, whose signatures had to appear on the application forms. Politicians could submit one application per school for all schools in their constituency.Footnote ⁶ Politicians were given two weeks to submit the applications to the district education office, where the applications were time stamped. Valid applications were then entered into a public lottery at the district headquarters. The number of grants assigned to each district was proportional to the district population and ranged between two and five to ensure that the probability of winning was relatively constant across politicians. We received a total of 1,662 applications out of a possible 4,585. Of the submitted grant applications, 1,388 were valid and entered into the lottery; 61 grants were allocated to schools. To construct a performance measure, we use the number of valid grants, and conduct robustness checks using the number of incomplete grants and a binary variable indicating whether the politician facilitated at least one application.

Composite Index. We combine the above performance outcome measures into a single index. First, following Kling et al. (Reference Kling, Liebman and Katz2007), we estimate the mean treatment effect, which entails (1) recoding outcome variables so that higher values always indicate “better” outcomes, (2) standardizing those variables to allow comparable effect magnitudes,Footnote ⁷ (3) imputing missing values as the treatment assignment group mean, and (4) compiling a summary index that gives equal weight to each outcome component. The second method follows Anderson (Reference Anderson2008), who recommends constructing the summary index at stage (4) as a weighted mean of the standardized outcome component, where the weights—the inverse of the covariance matrix— maximize the amount of information captured by the index.Footnote ⁸ Both approaches are robust to overtesting because the index represents a single test. Individual measures are positively correlated (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.47).

Intense Dissemination (ID). The core independent variable is an indicator variable (ID) that equals 1 for politicians assigned to the treatment group and 0 for the control.

Constituency Competitiveness. To measure our core moderating variable, we assembled pretreatment electoral returns data from the 2011 elections culled from the Ugandan Electoral Commission. Following Cleary (Reference Cleary2007), we first calculate each politician’s Margin of victory, measured as −|W ₂₀₁₁ − C ₂₀₁₁|, capturing the difference in vote share of the incumbent politician (W ₂₀₁₁) and her main challenger (C ₂₀₁₁) in the 2011 constituency-wide local elections. For robustness, we follow Besley, Persson, and Sturm (Reference Besley, Persson and Sturm2010) and further construct a measure of Majority distance, measured as −|W ₂₀₁₁ − 0.5|. Consistent with our theoretical framework, these variables (ρ = 0.95) capture the extent of an incumbent’s uncertainty about her chances of reelection.Footnote ⁹ We further dichotomize both variables at the median value and report robustness to binary competitiveness measures, which have a value of one for more competitive constituencies.Footnote ¹⁰

Ethnic Fractionalization. Our second moderator—overlap between social group and political constituency—is proxied using a measure of ethnolinguistic fractionalization (ELF) calculated from the 2002 census using a simple Herfindahl concentration index; such that ELF = 1 − ∑ⁿ_{i = 1}s_j ² where s _j is the share of ethnic group j, and (j = 1. . .n).

Additional Explanatory Variables. We estimate models with and without covariate adjustment. Politician-level variables include continuous measures of baseline scorecard total scores (2011–2012) and the number of challengers in the 2011 election, as well as indicator variables for caucusing with the ruling party (NRM), “special women” politician mandate, first-term politicians, and for attaining at least a postsecondary education. Constituency-level variables include a continuous measure of (log) population, and asset-based poverty level derived from the 2002 census. Table 3 shows descriptive statistics for all variables used in the study’s empirical analysis.

TABLE 3.

Summary Statistics

TABLE 4.

DV: Politician Performance Index

Notes: ELF refers to ethnolinguistic fractionalization. Models include district fixed effects and adjust for covariates. Models reported in columns 2–3 are estimated separately for high and low political competition, using the Margin of victory binary variable.

*p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01

Empirical Model

For all outcome measures, we estimate a series of cross-sectional ordinary least square (OLS) regressions, captured by Equation 1:

(1) $$\begin{equation} Y_i = \alpha + \beta _1 ID_i + \phi + \gamma X + \epsilon _i, \end{equation}$$

where Y _i denotes the performance measure of politician i at the endline, ID the high transparency treatment assignment, ϕ district fixed effects (our blocking variable), and ε the error term clustered at the district level. Since the number of districts is relatively small (20), standard errors are bootstrapped using 1,000 repetitions (Cameron, Gelbach, and Miller Reference Cameron, Gelbach and Miller2008).Footnote ¹¹ We report models with and without X, a vector of pretreatment politician and constituency covariates, defined above.Footnote ¹²

Since we hypothesize that the treatment effect would be greater in competitive constituencies, we re-estimate Equation 1 including the competitive variable Margin of victory and its quadratic as well as its interaction with the ID indicator.Footnote ¹³ However, while the ID treatment has been randomized, electoral competitiveness has not. Since competitiveness in the 2011 election is pretreatment, the conditional average treatment effect is well identified. However, this conditioning variable likely captures competitiveness and a bundle of factors that make a constituency competitive or mutually reinforce competitiveness. Thus, we interpret the competitiveness variable and its interaction to be this bundle; it is beyond the scope of this article to explain how some constituencies came to be more competitive. We therefore attempt to isolate competitiveness as much as possible using available data. Table 8 in the appendix shows that while competitiveness is not correlated with gender, mandate, past political experience, education attainment, constituency population, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, or development level, politicians from competitive constituencies face more challengers, have lower baseline scores, and are less likely to caucus with the NRM.Footnote ¹⁴ To disentangle competitiveness from the above covariates, we control for them in our conditional treatment effects regression analysis.