The Anatomy of Failure : An Ethnography of a Randomized Trial to Deepen Democracy in Rural India
Programs that induce citizen participation to improve the quality of government at the local level are the subjects of large amounts of funding and intense debate. This paper combines a randomized control trial of a citizenship training and facilit...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/06/19749946/anatomy-failure-ethnography-randomized-trial-deepen-democracy-rural-india http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19368 |
| Summary: | Programs that induce citizen
participation to improve the quality of government at the
local level are the subjects of large amounts of funding and
intense debate. This paper combines a randomized control
trial of a citizenship training and facilitation program in
rural India, with an in-depth, four-year ethnography of the
intervention to understand the underlying mechanisms of
change. The quantitative data show no impact from the
intervention. Household and village survey data from 100
treatment and 100 control villages show considerable
improvement across a wide variety of governance and
participation indicators over time, but the differences in
the changes between treatment and control villages are not
statistically significant. The detailed qualitative data
from a 10 percent subsample allow us to unpack the reasons
why the intervention "failed," highlighting the
role of variations in the quality of facilitation, lack of
top-down support, and difficulties with confronting the
stubborn challenge of persistent inequality. However, the
qualitative investigation also uncovered subtle treatment
effects that are difficult to observe in structured surveys.
The paper thus demonstrates that a concerted effort to use
"thick description" to uncover the process of
change using careful and detailed qualitative work can add
value to standard impact evaluations. |
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