Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

James Fearon, Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein

No 194, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a community, and that the ability of a community to act collectively is the result of a slow and necessarily indigenous process. We address this question using a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) project carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in northern Liberia. The project attempted to build democratic, community-level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods. We find powerful evidence that the program was successful in increasing social cohesion, some evidence that it reinforced democratic political attitudes and increased confidence in local decision-making procedures, but only weak evidence that material well-being was positively affected. There is essentially no evidence of adverse effects.

Keywords: Liberia; reconstruction; post-conflict; institution building; democracy; development; peacebuilding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2009-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:194

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