The politics of policy reform: experimental evidence from Liberia

Wayne Sandholtz

NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA

Abstract: Public service reform often entails broad benefits for society and concentrated costs for interest groups. Do the electoral benefits outweigh the costs for politicians who implement reform? This paper examines the electoral effects of a randomized Liberian school reform which increased student learning but antagonized teachers. The policy reduced ruling party vote share by 3 percentage points (10%). It also reduced teachers job satisfaction by 0.18s and political involvement by 0.22s. I use the evaluation s pairwise randomization to show that the effect on vote share was positively correlated with student learning, and negatively correlated with teacher political disengagement.

Keywords: Electoral returns; Policy feedback; Public service delivery; Policy experimentation; Education; Political economy; Elections; Randomized controlled trial; Liberia; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D72 H41 I25 O10 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
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Working Paper: The politics of policy reform: Experimental evidence from Liberia (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2202

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