The federal character principle is Nigeria's primary formula for mitigating horizontal inequality and conflict in this chronically fractured society. Designed to guarantee inter-group inclusion in the conduct and composition of governmental institutions, the principle spans direct, integrative,...

Forty billion dollars of official development assistance during 1991-2012 reduced Ethiopian absolute poverty while underwriting more efficient but exclusionary public institutions. This aid-institutions paradox reflects a strong interest-alignment between major donors pursuing geostrategic...

Governments do not have perfect information regarding constituent priorities and needs. This lack of knowledge opens the door for groups to lobby in order to affect the government’s taxation levels. We examine the political economy of decentralized revenue-raising authority in light of social...

In this paper, we estimate the efficiency of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana, and investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local public goods and services delivery by MMDAs. Using data from composite budgets of all 216 MMDAs, we...

There is a widespread perception that taxing in sub-Saharan Africa has been and remains fraught with problems or government failure. This is not generally true. For more than a century, colonial administrations and independent states have steadily developed the capacity to routinely collect more...

This paper examines the influence of political considerations on intergovernmental fiscal transfers in Ghana. The two-step system GMM approach was used to estimate transfers and elections data for 167 districts from 1994 to 2014. The analysis was country-wide and covers swing districts as well...

Uganda's post-colony continues to be haunted by the colonial logic of ethnicity. This logic has mapped the country's post-colonial political landscape as a terrain on which spirals of ethnic-based conflicts and violence are the norm. Because colonial ethnic spatial demarcations were also...

This paper sheds light on the complex recovery governance in Ukraine by providing a snapshot of the evolving national recovery actors' networks and examining them within a multi-level governance framework, using interviews, social network analysis, and a sense-making workshop. It highlights the...

Facilitadores Judiciales is a programme run by the Organization of the American States and the Nicaraguan judiciary. The main objective of the programme is to improve access to justice for the disadvantaged people in Nicaragua. From 1998 to 2010 the programme was implemented in almost all rural...

Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...