Global Policy Papers by

Brigitte Aime' Zimmerman Seim, PhD

How information about foreign aid affects public spending decisions- Evidence from a field experiment in Malawi

Abstract

Does foreign aid shift public spending? Many worry that aid will be “fungible” in the sense that governments reallocate public funds in response to aid. If so, this could undermine development, increase the poorest’s dependency on donors, and free resources for patronage. Yet, there is little agreement about the scale or consequences of such effects. We conducted an experiment with 460 elected politicians in Malawi. We provided information about foreign aid projects in local schools to these politicians. Afterwards, politicians made real decisions about which schools to target with development goods. Politicians who received the aid information treatment were 18% less likely to target schools with existing aid. These effects increase to 22–29% when the information was plausibly novel. We find little evidence that aid information heightens targeting of political supporters or family members, or dampens, support to the neediest. Instead, the evidence indicates politicians allocate the development goods in line with equity concerns.

Measuring online political activity introducing the digital society project dataset

We argue that assessing whether democracy has recently declined hinges crucially on the conceptualization and operationalization of democracy. Democracy is a contested concept, and indices measuring different notions of democracy capture different aspects of political systems.

Assessing-data-quality-an-approach-and-an-application

Abstract

Political scientists routinely face the challenge of assessing the quality (validity and reliability) of measures in order to use them in substantive research. While stand-alone assessment tools exist, researchers rarely combine them comprehensively. Further, while a large literature informs data producers,dataconsumers lack guidance on how to assess existing measures for use in substantive research. We delineate a three-component practical approach to data quality assessment that integrates complementary multimethod tools to assess: (1) content validity; (2) the validity and reliability of the data generation process; and (3) convergent validity. We apply our quality assessment approach to the corruption measures from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, both illustrating our rubric and unearthing several quality advantages and disadvantages of the V-Dem measures, compared to other existing measures of corruption.

Avoiding-checkbox-inclusion-structuring-meaningful-inclusion-of-underrepresented-groups-in-policy-engagement

An often-posed solution is to deliberately include members of underrepresented groups on proposals and policy-engagement projects. Although it certainly is an improvement over complete exclusion, we argue that this “checkbox inclusion” inadvertently may continue to exclude rather than meaningfully include, for various reasons.

Patient’s Sister, Seeking Job -- JAMA

My brother was diagnosed with Hepatoblastoma when I was 4 years old and he was just shy of two. It wasn’t until years (and several cancers) later that we learned he had Gardner syndrome. Over the last 26 years, Hans had dozens of operations and underwent many lifetime doses of radiation and chemotherapy. The disease and its treatments took a toll on his body, and he had a multivisceral transplant in 2007that gave him a new stomach, small intestine, pancreas, and liver. Five years later, his liver showed signs of chronic rejection and he was put back on the transplant list. We waited for organs for four months. Hans was primarily in the hospital during this time. Finally, internal bleeding, the result of debilitated organs and a large abdominal wound, took his life on December 26, 2012.