How Democratic Governance Affects Public Services: Evidence from Local Governments

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Researchers have not been able to establish whether and how democratic governance causes better outcomes for lack of appropriate data. This award funds research that uses a unique historical data set and innovative economic methods to investigate how democratic governance improves the provision of public services, long term economic growth, and the well-being of citizens. The data involves changes in the structure of local governments that allowed some members to be appointed while others were democratically elected. These changes in the composition of local governments allows the researchers to use modern economic methods to establish causality between democratic governance and public service provision and long-term economic growth. The data collected for this research will be made available to other researchers interested in studying the effects of democratic governance on many outcomes. The results of this research will contribute to a better understanding of the effects of democratic governance on economic and social outcomes, thus helping to establish the superiority of democratic governance over other forms of governance. The results will also further help cement US as the global leader in democratic led human and social development efforts. While recent research typically finds the existence of a positive correlation between democratic governance and increased public goods provision and rapid economic growth, these studies have not establish a causal effect of democracy on these outcomes partly because of lack of appropriate data. This award funds research that will digitize a unique historical data set on democratic transitions in several local governments and use the data to draw causal inference on the effects of democratic governance on public service provision, long term economic growth, and overall well-being. Membership of these local governments consisted of appointed and democratically elected members and the formula for drawing the membership ensured that elected members differed randomly across communities. The PIs will use this quasi-random variation in democratically elected membership of these local governments causal identification. The digitized data will be made available to other researchers. Besides its contribution to economic science, the results of this research will demonstrate the superiority of democratic governance over other forms of governance in improving the lives of citizens and the need for its spread globally. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.