Can reconstruction programmes improve political perceptions in conflict contexts? Evidence from eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

Alexander De Juan, Carlo Koos, Miquel Pellicer and Eva Wegner

South African Journal of Economics, 2022, vol. 90, issue 4, 427-455

Abstract: Postconflict reconstruction programmes often aim to improve state–society relations but fail to spell out the underlying process. We specify a mechanism that links aid programmes through (1) short‐term and (2) medium‐term improvements in basic services and (3) subjective progress to (4) perceptions of the state and spell four conditions (quality, sustainability, magnitude and attribution to the state) that must be met for this process to occur. We use this framework to evaluate a large‐scale reconstruction programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We find that the programme improved basic services in the short term and midterm and positively affected beneficiaries' subjective well‐being. However, we do not find evidence that aid benefits have translated into political trust towards state institutions—on the contrary, project villages display slightly more negative attitudes than control villages. We suggest that this is due to lack of attribution of the improvements to the state that which was included in the selection phase but largely absent in the implementation. This implies that improved services can erode state legitimacy when citizens interpret the provision by nonstate actors as a signal of the state's inability or unwillingness to provide these services.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12330

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:90:y:2022:i:4:p:427-455

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-2280

Access Statistics for this article

South African Journal of Economics is currently edited by Philip A. Black

More articles in South African Journal of Economics from Economic Society of South Africa Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().