This book contains a compilation of contributions to a workshop in November 2007, "Generating Genuine Demand with Social Accountability Mechanisms," held in Paris, France, as well as specially commissioned articles and case studies from experts from development practice and academia.This...

Recently, health policy experts have sounded the warning about the severe health and economic consequences of America's growing obesity epidemic. Despite this fact, obesity has not yet entered America's political consciousness and we have little information about what average Americans think of...

A growing body of research shows the influence of political elites on the public's policy preferences. Yet we know little about the dynamics of elite influence or the cognitive mechanisms through which elite signals are interpreted in "real time"-that is, as public deliberation over a policy...

The Credibility Revolution advances quantitative research designs intended to identify causal effects from observed data. The ensuing emphasis on internal validity however has enabled the neglect of construct and external validity. This article develops a framework we call causal specification....

How do decentralized systems collectively solve problems? Here we explore the interplay among three canonical forms of collective organization - markets, networks, and hierarchies - in aggregating decentralized problem solving. We examine these constructs in the context of how the offices of...

State programmatic expertise is an important asset to federal systems, but this expertise is not always informative to federal decision-makers. I argue the degree to which state expertise is informative to federal decision-makers depends on how well the policy interests of state and federal...