TY  - JOUR
AU  - Olken,Benjamin A.
TI  - Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14123
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14123
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14123.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Benjamin A. Olken
Department of Economics
MIT
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02142-1347
Tel: 617/588-1437
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: bolken@mit.edu
AB  - This paper presents an experiment where 48 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing the political mechanism had much smaller effects on the actual projects selected, with some evidence that plebiscites resulted in projects chosen by women being located in poorer areas. The results show that direct participation in political decision making can substantially increase satisfaction and legitimacy, even when it has little effect on actual decisions.
ER  -