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AbstractRapid urbanisation in developing countries has often resulted in slums with minimal public goods provision, where the poor rely on clientelist networks to provide for their basic needs. Using household‐level data, this paper is the first to empirically document how political clientelism operates in Pakistani slums. It finds that urban brokers, unlike their rural counterparts, are unable to claim credit for public goods provision. Instead, they provide personalised and highly targeted services – such as dispute resolution and assistance with documentation. Moreover, unlike traditional clientelism, urban networks are found to be problem‐solving and welfare‐enhancing for slum dwellers.

In many developing countries the rural poor often depend on patrons to act as brokers in order to get public provision from the government. The broker facilitates provision in return for securing peasants' votes for politicians. Yet, low bargaining power of peasants allows patrons to appropriate public resources for themselves. I propose increasing peasants' bargaining power by connecting them to markets outside their village. Making use of a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway in Pakistan, I find public provision to be significantly higher in connected villages when compared to those which are isolated. Moreover, I find that the beneficial impact of connectivity is felt most strongly by the lower classes, who are most vulnerable to exploitation when isolated

In many developing countries the rural poor often depend on patrons to act as brokers in order to get public provision from the government. The broker facilitates provision in return for securing peasants' votes for politicians. Yet, low bargaining power of peasants allows patrons to appropriate public resources for themselves. I propose increasing peasants' bargaining power by connecting them to markets outside their village. Making use of a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway in Pakistan, I find public provision to be significantly higher in connected villages when compared to those which are isolated. Moreover, I find that the beneficial impact of connectivity is felt most strongly by the lower classes, who are most vulnerable to exploitation when isolated.

Backed by studies finding only limited propensity for free-riding when communities have an interest in self-provision, the last few decades have seen a surge of interest in community-based development. A major caveat to the "second wave" of collective action studies, however, is that collective action often breaks down under hierarchical social relationships. This is unfortunate news for developing countries' rural societies, which are often entrenched in patron-client networks. Using a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway, the article finds that clientelist relationships do not, in and by themselves, block peasant collective action. Rather, it is the interaction between clientelism and isolation that empowers patrons to block community-based projects. Peasants in connected villages face no such constraints, but instead rely on their patrons' assistance in collective projects, making the hierarchical network an additional resource.

Using the case of Pakistan, this article explores the distribution and politics of public goods provision in urban slums. Across slums, we find that public goods are mainly provided to households located in central slums rather than those in the urban periphery. Within slums, we find politicians target spending towards wealthy households but do not go through brokers, unlike the more-studied case of India. Overall, the article shows how electoral incentives in Pakistan are biased against programmatic public goods provision for the urban poor. Our results then point to variation in patronage politics among slums in the Global South.

Institutional reforms are structural changes in the rules and norms of authority, with effects that are long-term and unpredictable on government, politics, and society. But leaders may undertake them to solve unrelated, discrete, short-term political problems. Understanding the latter is key to understanding the characteristics of many real reforms, and hence their fate. We introduce the concept of instrumental incoherence and use it to construct a theory of decentralization where reform is motivated by orthogonal objectives. We show that reformers' incentives map onto the specifics of reform design via their side effects, not their main effects, which in turn lead to the medium- and long-term consequences eventually realized. We characterize downwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of the center to empower local voters, vs. upwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of local government to empower the center. We use these ideas to explain highly divergent outcomes in two extreme cases, Bolivia and Pakistan, using detailed, original evidence. Our analysis likely extends to a broader class of reforms where the incentives of agents pursuing a change, and the effects of that change, are highly asymmetric in time and dimension.

AbstractInstitutional reforms are structural changes in the rules and norms of authority, with effects that are long-term and unpredictable on government, politics, and society. But leaders may undertake them to solve unrelated, discrete, short-term political problems. Understanding the latter is key to understanding the characteristics of many real reforms, and hence their fate. We introduce the concept ofinstrumental incoherenceand use it to construct a theory of decentralization where reform is motivated by orthogonal objectives. We show that reformers' incentives map onto the specifics of reform design via their side effects, not their main effects, which in turn lead to the medium- and long-term consequences eventually realized. We characterize downwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of the center to empower local voters, vs. upwardly accountable decentralization, which ties the hands of local government to empower the center. We use these ideas to explain highly divergent outcomes in two extreme cases, Bolivia and Pakistan, using detailed, original evidence. Our analysis likely extends to a broader class of reforms where the incentives of agents pursuing a change, and the effects of that change, are highly asymmetric in time and dimension.

If the effects of institutional reforms are long-term and unpredictable, why do leaders undertake them? We analyze reforms where the incentives of agents pursuing a change, and the effects of that change, are highly asymmetric in time and policy dimensions. We examine detailed evidence from decentralization in Bolivia and Pakistan, and explain very different outcomes with a simple game-theoretic model of the incentives and interactions amongst ruling and opposition parties, and civil society, over multiple periods. Politicians decentralize to solve a discrete, often short-term political problem. But decentralization is neither short-term nor discrete, but rather a deep change in the structure of public finance and authority with long-term effects on government, politics and society. Understanding the original problem is key to understanding the characteristics of the reform implemented, as well as its ultimate success or failure. Our analysis likely extends to a broader class of deep reforms with long-term consequences.