TY - JOUR
T1 - International Interventions to Build Social Capital
T2 - Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan
AU - Avdeenko, Alexandra
AU - Gilligan, Michael J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Political Science Association.
PY - 2015/8/7
Y1 - 2015/8/7
N2 - Increasingly the international community attempts to improve local public infrastructure in developing countries by creating more participatory local governance and social capital. We report on a randomized field experiment conducted in 24 communities (16 treated and 8 control) in rural Sudan. We offer a clearer theoretical statement of how these programs might alter the political landscape of the recipient villages. We measure norms using lab-in-the-field techniques and we measure network density with a survey of our 475 lab subjects. We appraise the participatory character of local governance and civic participation with a survey of 576 households. The program did not affect either networks or norms, but civic participation and the participatory nature of local governance increased. Thus we attribute the increase in citizen participation not to social capital growth but to more open local governing institutions.
AB - Increasingly the international community attempts to improve local public infrastructure in developing countries by creating more participatory local governance and social capital. We report on a randomized field experiment conducted in 24 communities (16 treated and 8 control) in rural Sudan. We offer a clearer theoretical statement of how these programs might alter the political landscape of the recipient villages. We measure norms using lab-in-the-field techniques and we measure network density with a survey of our 475 lab subjects. We appraise the participatory character of local governance and civic participation with a survey of 576 households. The program did not affect either networks or norms, but civic participation and the participatory nature of local governance increased. Thus we attribute the increase in citizen participation not to social capital growth but to more open local governing institutions.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0003055415000210
DO - 10.1017/S0003055415000210
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84938867927
SN - 0003-0554
VL - 109
SP - 427
EP - 449
JO - American Political Science Review
JF - American Political Science Review
IS - 3
ER -