Despite a widespread trend towards the adoption of increasingly participatory approaches to political decision-making in developing countries there is little or no evidence that these practices in fact return the benefits attributed to them. We present an empirical investigation into one...

Social scientists are increasingly engaging in experimental research projects of importance for public policy in developing areas. While this research holds the possibility of producing major social benefits, it may also involve manipulating populations,

We introduce political salience into a canonical model of attacks against political regimes, as scaling agents' expressive payoffs from taking sides. Equilibrium balances heterogeneous expressive concerns with material bandwagoning incentives, and we show that comparative statics in salience...