Informational Campaigns and Service Delivery

Origins of Informational Campaigns

• Traditional development approaches were top-down, with donors dictating solutions.
• These approaches have often been ineffective.
• There has been a shift towards bottom-up approaches that empower citizens.
• Informational campaigns aim to empower citizens to pressure for better service delivery, turning the conventional approach on its head.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in programs based on these theories.

Rationale for Informational Campaigns

• Service delivery failures due to poor governance are a major cause of poverty.
• The key question is how to improve governance and the quality of service delivery.

Decentralization and Community-Driven Development (CDD)

• Decentralization aims to bring government closer to the people, increasing accountability. Decision-makers are more accountable to the people by providing them with the power to unelect them, to replace them, to sanction them in the next elections.
• CDD involves communities in project conception, execution, and monitoring.
• However, these approaches have not consistently worked well in practice.

Targeting Service Providers and Politicians

• Focus on pressuring doctors, nurses, teachers, and bureaucrats to improve performance.
• Alternatively, apply pressure on politicians overseeing these service providers.

Challenges with Top-Down Pressure

• External pressure from donors or government officials often proves ineffective.
• Outsiders lack sufficient influence over government officials and bureaucrats due to lack of power over government officials.

Bottom-Up Pressure from Citizens

• Engage citizens to apply pressure for better service quality.
• Political freedom and democracy are prerequisites for this approach to succeed.

Global Shift Towards Democracy

• There has been a significant increase in democracies worldwide, creating more opportunities for citizen-driven improvements.
• From 1946 to 2015, there was a noticeable shift in the distribution of democracies and autocracies around the world.
• Data from 1800 to 2022 shows a historical prevalence of closed autocracies, with a recent expansion of electoral systems.
• More countries now offer basic freedoms that enable citizens to apply pressure on their governments.

The Role of Information

• Democracy alone is insufficient; citizens need motives to demand better services.
• Knowledge about the current and expected levels of service delivery is essential.
• Comparison with service delivery in other regions provides a benchmark.
• Without adequate information, it is difficult to hold service providers accountable.
• Citizens require a good sense of what the providers should be doing and what others are doing elsewhere to make informed comparisons.

Amartya Sen and Famines in Democracies

• Sen observed that famines do not occur in democracies due to the access to a free press.
• A free press equips citizens with information to recognize and prevent catastrophes.
• The combination of freedom to protest and access to information is crucial.

Interventions Based on Information Provision

• Numerous interventions in the global South aim to provide citizens with essential information.
• These initiatives collect and disseminate data on service quality and expected service levels.
• Approaches include newspaper and radio campaigns, report cards, and audits.
• The goal is to empower citizens to pressure underperforming service providers.

Theorized Causal Chain

• Information leads to citizen action or pressure.
• Citizen action changes the behavior of bureaucrats or frontline service providers.
• Behavioral changes improve the quality of services.
• Improved services enhance the welfare of the population.

Routes of Accountability

• Short Route: Citizens directly pressure frontline service providers.
• Long Route: Citizens pressure elected representatives, who in turn pressure service providers.
• This framework was central to the 2004 World Development Report: "Making Services Work for Poor People."
• The core idea is that providing citizens with concrete information about the actions of service providers is key to generating pressure for improvements.
• The information includes both absolute data on current service levels and relative data comparing these levels to expected standards or the performance of other communities.

Case Studies of Information Campaigns

Matatu Safety Campaign in Kenya

• The study doesn't really deal with information and service delivery per se, but it is about using information to try to mobilize citizens to change their behavior in a way that, as you'll see, it could be a great benefit to them.
• Matatus (minibuses) are a major mode of transportation in Kenya but are often dangerous.
• Road traffic injuries are a significant public health issue in low- and middle-income countries.
• An intervention by James Habermana and Billy Jack used stickers in matatus to encourage passengers to speak up against dangerous driving.
• Stickers contained messages urging passengers to speak up if the driver was driving in a crazy way that that might harm them.
• The study randomized sticker placement by the matatu's license plate number to avoid selection bias.
• Drivers were incentivized to keep the stickers in place through a lottery.
• Insurance claims data was used to assess the impact on road safety.
• Insurance claims fell by one-half to one-third for matatus with stickers.
• Claims involving injury or death fell by about sixty percent.
• The intervention proved to be both effective and cost-efficient.
• Road traffic deaths are the number one cause of death among children aged five to 14.

Performance Report Cards for Members of Parliament in Uganda

• A study by McCartney Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein examined whether providing citizens with information about their MPs' performance would improve MP behavior, and whether the withdrawal of support for the MP in the next election if the information suggested that the MP was not doing a very good job.
• Annual report cards were created for Ugandan MPs, covering attendance, committee work, and constituency service.
• The report cards were disseminated in half of the MPs' constituencies.
• The study assessed whether the information affected voting intentions and MP behavior.
• Voters who received positive information were more likely to support their MP, while negative information decreased support.
• However, there was no evidence that MPs changed their behavior as a result of the report cards.
• Nor was there evidence that voters withdrew their support from underperforming MPs in the next election.
• A counter-information campaign by MPs may have undermined the report cards' impact.
• Another possibility is that the information provided (attendance, office maintenance) was not relevant to voters' concerns.
• Humphreys and Weinstein have a follow-up paper where they try to address this issue.

Municipal Audit Information in Mexico

• Researchers distributed flyers before the 2009 local elections, revealing the percentage of stolen municipal funds.
• The flyers informed citizens about the gap between allocated and spent funds.
• Turnout was lower in areas that received the flyers, particularly in more corrupt precincts.
• People were less likely to turn out. They de mobilized rather than mobilized, and the effect was even stronger in the precincts that were found to be more corrupt.
• This de-mobilization was contrary to the expected outcome, suggesting that citizens were disheartened rather than motivated by the information.
• the effect was even stronger in the precincts that were found to be more corrupt.

Uwezo Education Campaign in Kenya

• An evaluation of a large-scale information campaign in the education sector that was designed to try to improve education outcomes by giving parents information about how much their kids were learning in school.
• Uwezo tested children's literacy and numeracy and reported the results to parents.
• Parents also received materials with strategies to support their children's learning.
• The study evaluated whether the program encouraged parental involvement and improved learning outcomes.
• There was no evidence that parents were impelled to put pressure on teachers to do better.
• It also showed no effects to encourage parents to be more active participants in their kids' learning.
• No significant impact was found on either public or private actions taken by parents.
• This led to a re-evaluation of the conditions necessary for information campaigns to be effective.

Conditions for Effective Information Campaigns

• A flowchart illustrates the multiple conditions for information to change behavior:
  • Does the citizen understand the information?
  • Is the information new?
  • Does the citizen care about the issue?
  • Does the citizen feel responsible to act?
  • Does the citizen know what to do?
  • Does the citizen have the skills to act?
  • Does the citizen anticipate their actions will have an impact (efficacy)?
  • Does the citizen think their individual behavior can make a difference?
• If any of these conditions are not met, the information may not lead to behavioral change.
• These multiple conditions may explain why many information campaigns do not achieve their intended outcomes.