International interventions to build social capital: evidence from a field experiment in Sudan

Alexandra Avdeenko, Michael J. Gilligan, Alexandra Avdeenko and Michael J. Gilligan
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alexandra Avdeenko

No 6772, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Over the past decade the international community, especially the World Bank, has conducted programs to increase local public service delivery in developing countries by improving local governing institutions and creating social capital. This paper evaluates one such program in Sudan to answer the question: Can the international community change the grassroots civic culture of developing countries to increase social capital? The paper offers three contributions. First, it uses lab-in-the-field measures to focus on the effects of the program on pro-social preferences without the confounding influence of any program- induced changes on local governing institutions. Second, it tests whether the program led to denser social networks in recipient communities. Based on these two measures, the effect of the program was a precisely estimated zero. However, in a retrospective survey, respondents from program communities characterized their behavior as being more pro-social and their communities more socially cohesive. This leads to a third contribution of the paper: it provides evidence for the hypothesis, stated by several scholars in the literature, that retrospective survey measures of social capital over biased evidence of a positive effect of these programs. Regardless of one's faith in retrospective self-reported survey measures, the results clearly point to zero impact of the program on pro-social preferences and social network density. Therefore, if the increase in self-reported behaviors is accurate, it must be because of social sanctions that enforce compliance with pro-social norms through mechanisms other than the social networks that were measured.

Keywords: Educational Sciences; Social Cohesion; Health Care Services Industry; Economics and Finance of Public Institution Development; De Facto Governments; Democratic Government; Public Sector Administrative and Civil Service Reform; Public Sector Administrative&Civil Service Reform; Regional Governance; Local Government; Social Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: International Interventions to Build Social Capital: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6772

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