Getting involved in field research in development
For my dissertation, I would like to make a randomized field experiment the cornerstone of the project. While I am still working on framing my project to a political science audience, I thought I would write up a brief description of my idea. It is my understanding that many development projects require a local planning and oversight committee (e.g., the Indonesia Kecamatan Development Program). The usual method of selecting leaders for these positions has been an election, but elections are not the only democratic method of selecting representatives. Sortition, or the random selection of leaders from the population, is not frequently used outside of jury selection in modern democracies, but it was a pillar of the Athenian system of democracy. If villages were randomly assigned to either elect or randomly select leaders, we could investigate the relative advantages and disadvantages of each mechanism in an important real world scenario. What types of projects do the two mechanisms encourage? Do citizens see decisions as more legitimate in one system? Do they participate in the decision process more? Is corruption controlled by the method of selecting leaders? Is aid money spent more efficiently?
These are but a selection of possible outcomes to consider from a field experiment of modest scope. For a NGO already working with local bodies, a simple change from elections to randomly selecting leaders could have large benefits for policy outcomes at relatively little additional cost (or the experiment could show that elections are the right tool for the job). A pilot study in which a subset of villages are randomly assigned to either election or sortition could be a very large return on a very small investment.
For my part, finding a suitable partner is my next step. Luckily, the Development Impact blog at the World Bank has published some suggestions on how young researchers can get their feet in the door on field research, especially randomized experiments.
Both authors in the World Bank post suggest making connections on the ground through field work. I had not previously considered this avenue, in part because my design does not require a particular location. Having read papers on local committees in Africa, Asia, and South America, I could imagine my experiment being run in almost any location. My flexibility is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I need not be discriminating in finding opportunities to engage in on-the-ground work. On the other hand, my lack of focus may not appeal to groups targeting specific populations.
In either case, the trick is find these groups and reach out. I am going to start with the specific suggestions from the blog post, with a long term goal of making on the ground connections. Anyone want to collaborate on a field experiment?
