This research investigates whether combining citizen monitoring with official accountability mechanisms could reduce corruption in Uganda's bureaucracy. Through a field experiment testing the delivery of formal reports generated by citizens to overseeing officials, we found that these reports were actively ignored by bureaucrats. Follow-up interviews suggest local officials avoided knowledge of problems to evade responsibility.
However, an unexpected outcome emerged: citizen complaints sparked significantly more public accountability than anticipated. This suggests that simply incorporating citizen perspectives into official channels may not be enough and highlights the importance of designing monitoring systems with citizens in mind for meaningful impact on governance.
| Combining Bottom-Up Monitoring and Top-Down Accountability: A Field Experiment on Managing Corruption in Uganda was authored by Mark T. Buntaine. It was published by Sage in R&P in 2020. |
