Why do some local governments condition the delivery of goods and services to citizens on individual political behavior, while others do not? In this paper, I outline a theory of variation in clientelism that focuses on differences in the incentives politicians face to use clientelism depending...

Horizontal accountability institutions are designed by the state to oversee itself. When are these institutions more or less likely to work as an effective check on government malfeasance? Focusing on appointed councilors who head subnational audit courts, we develop some preliminary hypotheses...

Indonesia drastically lags behind other countries in Southeast Asia and at similar levels of development in supplying urban wastewater sanitation. We use case studies from three cities in Indonesia to better understand why wastewater services are underprovided. We find strong demand-side...

We hypothesize that selective donors will use types of aid over which they have more control when providing assistance to poorly governed countries. We use an original classification of project purpose codes in the AidData dataset to categorize aid flows from the period 2004 to 2010. Results...

The total funding envelope for World Bank projects is often divided among various state and non-state actors, each of which can have competing ideas about or interests in the project. How does the division of financing relate to overall project effectiveness? I argue that too many funding...