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Honor among Chiefs: An Experiment on Monitoring and Diversion Among Traditional Leaders in Malawi

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journal contribution
posted on 2020-01-08, 18:31 authored by Elizabeth Carlson, Brigitte Seim

Traditional, hereditary chiefs are an integral part of the development infrastructure in many African countries. To capture chiefs’ behaviour as agents of development and understand the accountability mechanisms they face, we conduct a field experiment with 200 Malawian village chiefs, documenting how they distribute a valuable development good – iron roofing sheets – as we sequentially add monitoring by donors, subjects, and the state. We find evidence that even in the absence of formal accountability institutions, chiefs are responsive to monitoring by all principals. However, principals have competing demands: while most principals prefer allocations based on need as classified by the local community, a subset of the chief’s subjects – his relatives – prefer to receive sheets themselves, regardless of need. When subjects are informed about the availability of sheets, relatives are able to capture allocations, overriding other principals and causing discontent. Altogether, diversion is minimised when chiefs are monitored by the donor, and only the donor. When chiefs are monitored by all their principals simultaneously, diversion is not significantly lower (compared to control), but dissatisfaction among subjects is greater. This study adds to the literature on chieftaincy and highlights the role of common agency in the design and analysis of development interventions.

Funding

This research was supported by AidData at the College of William and Mary and the USAID Global Development Lab. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of AidData, USAID, or the United States Government. Invaluable research assistance was provided by Nonne Engelbrecht, Petra Matsi, Michela Del Mastro, Jimmy Mkandawire, and many friends and colleagues in Malawi. Data and code associated with this paper are available upon request.

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