What Shapes Citizens’ Evaluations of Their Public Officials’ Accountability? Evidence from Local Ethiopia
Public Administration and Development, 33(5): 389-403, 2013
30 Pages Posted: 5 Jul 2013 Last revised: 23 Mar 2018
Date Written: 2013
Abstract
In this article, we study which institutional factors shape citizens’ views of the local accountability of their public officials. Our departing assumption is that evaluations of local accountability do not merely reflect citizens’ political attitudes and beliefs, but also whether local institutions contribute to an environment of mutual trust, accountability and ultimately democratic legitimacy. Combining public opinion data from a large-N citizen survey (N=10,651) with contextual information for 63 local governments in Ethiopia, we look at access to information, participatory planning and the publicness of basic services as potential predictors of citizens’ evaluations of local public officials. Our findings suggest that local context matters. Jurisdictions that provide access to information on political decision-making are perceived to have more accountable officials. Moreover, when local governments provide public fora that facilitate citizens’ stakes in local planning processes, it positively affects citizens’ evaluations of the accountability of their officials. Our study adds to the empirical literature by showing that establishing local institutions that can foster citizen-government relations at the local level through inclusive processes is crucial for improving public perceptions of accountability.
Keywords: Access to information, accountability, citizen-government relations, Ethiopia, local government, participatory planning, publicness
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, ...
-
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, ...
-
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, ...
-
Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Education in India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, ...
-
Education and Hiv/Aids Prevention: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Western Kenya
By Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, ...
-
Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor
By Philip Keefer and Stuti Khemani
-
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, ...
-
By Karla Hoff and Joseph E. Stiglitz
-
By Priyanka Pandey, Sangeeta Goyal, ...