Showing papers by "Christopher Blattman published in 2012"

Building institutions at the micro-level: Results from a field experiment in property dispute and conflict resolution

Abstract: How to promote local order and property rights under weak rule of law? States commonly use education campaigns to influence citizen behavior and, ultimately, change generalized practices and norms (or informal institutions). But can education alone influence behavior, let alone “institutions”? In Liberia, property disputes are endemic, but access to formal legal institutions is scant. An intervention trained residents of 68 towns in mediation and advocated informal resolution practices and forums. We compare them to 179 randomized control towns a year later. We see little short-term impact on dispute levels or ferocity, but observe dramatically higher land dispute resolution and satisfaction. Spillovers within towns indicate generalized change - perhaps an early indication of institutionalization. Qualitative work suggests the intervention imparted superior mediation skills, enhanced the legitimacy of informal practices, and deterred defection to competing forums. We argue education can shift practices and norms by helping citizens coordinate on procedures and institutions.

Employment Generation in Rural Africa: Mid-Term Results from an Experimental Evaluation of the Youth Opportunities Program in Northern Uganda

Abstract: Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? We experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional, unsupervised cash transfers to pay for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs. Mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools. Second, the economic impacts of the transfer are large: hours of nonhousehold employment double and cash earnings increase by nearly 50% relative to the control group. We estimate the transfer yields a real annual return on capital of 35% on average. Third, the evidence suggests that poor access to credit is a major reason youth cannot start these vocations in the absence of aid. Much of the heterogeneity in impacts is unexplained, however, and is unrelated to conventional economic measures of ability, suggesting we have much to learn about the determinants of entrepreneurship. Finally, these economic gains result in modest improvements in social stability. Measures of social cohesion and community support improve mildly, by roughly 5 to 10%, especially among males, most likely because the youth becomes a net giver rather than a net taker in his kin and community network. Most strikingly, we see a 50% fall in interpersonal aggression and disputes among males, but a 50% increase among females. Neither change seems related to economic performance nor does social cohesion - a puzzle to be explored in the next phase of the study. These results suggest that increasing access to credit and capital could stimulate employment growth in rural Africa. In particular, unconditional and unsupervised cash transfers may be a more effective and cost-efficient form of large-scale aid than commonly believed. A second stage of data collection in 2012 will collect longitudinal economic impacts, additional data on political violence and behavior, and explore alternative theoretical mechanisms.

Children and War: How "Soft" Research Can Answer the Hard Questions in Political Science

Abstract: A s a graduate student, two months shy of defending my dissertation proposal, I yanked a first, respectable rough draft off my advisers’ desks and replaced it with something completely new: a pitch to head to Uganda and start a study of child soldiering. My advisers were unimpressed. “This sounds more like a policy report than a dissertation,” said one, “I’m not sure you should go.” No one disagreed the issue was important. But is tackling a humanitarian issue the sensible start for a budding social scientist? It’s a question young earnest scholars ask themselves every year: Can I get my Ph.D. and still save the world? As it happened, there was more to my pitch. Buried inside the proposal, hidden to me at the time, was the germ of actual social science, something more than a policy report. Ultimately, the study would change the way I think about fundamental questions in international relations and comparative politics: the organization of rebellion, the diffusion of international norms, and the legacy of political violence on economic and political development. Big questions, I discovered, get answered in unusual places. For the academic who tackles policy questions or humanitarian issues, the real world impact can be its own reward. If that means sacrificing “serious” scholarship, some say, then so be it. I think that trade-off, however, is false and misleading. It leads to narrow and disjointed scholarship. Policy and science both suffer when the links to theory and big questions are ignored. The three books under review here all tackle a topic— children in war—with glaring moral consequence. Each book manages to avoid most of the myths and cliches that surround their lurid subjects. And each book delivers original and overlooked lessons for the problems facing waraffected children. But perhaps most important, each book contains lessons for our larger understanding of warfare and the politics of advocacy and aid. These larger lessons, however, can struggle to emerge, for issues of great moral consequence can also obscure. Child soldiers and children born of wartime rape are as vivid, wrenching, and sensational as any subject in our profession. Speaking from my own experience, one struggles constantly with the scholarly disposition. On the one hand, keeping such a stance is hard. Field research brings emotional anguish and helplessness, and dealing with inert bureaucracies and injustice brings fury and despair. More importantly, it becomes difficult to separate advocacy from critical thought; sensational images and banal policyspeak too easily substitute for facts. On the other hand, it is also a struggle to escape the scholar’s disposition. You catch yourself speaking of genocide or child abduction as variables and forgetting they are atrocities. More seriously, you become stuck in arcane details and arguments, and in fighting myths and sensation you can find yourself more callous and petty than objective and insightful. Neither circumstance does the victims, policy, or science the service each deserves. Christopher Blattman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University (christopher.blattman@yale.edu). He is grateful to Charli Carpenter, Scott Gates, Benjamin Morse, and Simon Reich for comments on drafts of this essay. Earlier discussions with Jeannie Annan, Jo Becker, Radikha Coomaraswamy, and Timothy La Rose were immensely helpful as well. | |