This paper explores the conditions under which cultural cleavages become politically salient. It does so by taking advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the division of the Chewa and Tumbuka peoples by the border between Zambia and Malawi. I document that, while the objective cultural differences between Chewas and Tumbukas on both sides of the border are identical, the political salience of the division between these communities is altogether different. I argue that this difference stems from the different sizes of the Chewa and Tumbuka communities in each country relative to each country's national political arena. In Malawi, Chewas and Tumbukas are each large groups vis-a-vis the country as a whole and, thus, serve as viable bases for political coalition-building. In Zambia, Chewas and Tumbukas are small relative to the country as a whole and, thus, not useful to mobilize as bases of political support. The analysis suggests that the political salience of a cultural cleavage depends not on the nature of the cleavage itself (since it is identical in both countries) but on the sizes of the groups it defines and whether or not they will be useful vehicles for political competition.

In most studies of the impact of ethnic diversity on economic growth, diversity is hypothesized to affect growth through its effect on macroeconomic policies. This article shows that most measures of ethnic diversity (including the commonly used ELF measure) are inappropriate for testing this hypothesis. This is because they are constructed from enumerations of ethnic groups that include all of the ethnographically distinct groups in a country irrespective of whether or not they engage in the political competition whose effects on macroeconomic policy making are being tested. I present a new index of ethnic fractionalization based on an accounting of politically relevant ethnic groups in 42 African countries. I employ this measure (called PREG, for Politically Relevant Ethnic Groups) to replicate Easterly and Levine's influential article on Africa's "growth tragedy." I find that PREG does a Much better job of accounting for the policy-mediated effects of ethnic diversity on economic growth in Africa than does ELF.

In this dissertation, I examine the causal effect of election integrity on the responsiveness of elected officials in developing democracies. In many countries, domestic and international organizations regularly support interventions aimed at reducing electoral fraud. These efforts are rooted in the belief that fairer elections will strengthen the ability of citizens to control politicians and promote political responsiveness. However, we have no empirical support for this widely held belief. I describe a field experiment that randomized the deployment of roughly 1,300 election observers at different intensities across 60 electoral constituencies in Ghana. I leverage this experiment to test the effects of fairer elections on the responsiveness of Members of Parliament (MPs). Because the higher concentration of observers was associated with lower levels of election-day fraud and violence, the random assignment of election observation intensities across constituencies provides an instrument for levels of election integrity.I assess responsiveness using original data on how MPs in Ghana allocate their state- provided Constituency Development Funds to provide private benefits and public infrastructure to constituents. The results show that politicians elected in intensely monitored elections spend more of their CDFs, suggesting that fairer elections increase the effort of incumbents. Decomposing this effect, intense monitoring increases MPs’ spending on public goods but does not affect the level of private goods provision. Moreover, legislators elected in constituencies that had a higher presence of observers are more likely to abide by the national procurement laws when spending their funds, indicating that fairer elections also promote good governance. Overall, the findings suggest that the quality of elections is an important determinant of political responsiveness and provide the first causal evidence of the connection between election integrity and the performance of elected officials.

To explain my findings, I hypothesize that MPs exposed to high-intensity monitoring in the past improve their performance in office because they do not expect to have opportunities to commit fraud in future elections. I contend that the ability of politicians to rig elections influences incumbents’ levels of effort to meet the expectations of constituents. The ability to manipulate elections allows politicians to substitute fraud for effort without facing electoral consequences.

To investigate the effects of clean elections on the behavior of politicians, researchers need to manipulate incumbents’ beliefs about the integrity of future elections. To manipulate these expectations, I implement an experiment that randomized information to 60 of 120 MPs to say that they should expect to receive intense monitoring of their constituencies in Ghana’s December 2016 parliamentary elections. The control group did not receive such a letter. I argue that such information should motivate incumbents to work harder to satisfy the demands of citizens because they believe that they cannot rely on election-day fraud. Analysis of election results from the December 2016 election provides tentative support for my hypothesis. Future analyses of legislator spending of CDFs in 2016 would provide a definitive assessment of my primary explanation of the causal effect of fair elections on political responsiveness.

This paper looks to understand the current salience of national identity in South Sudan. It is based off of a study conducted between June and July of 2015 among a sample of 75 respondents in Juba, South Sudan. The paper focuses on the analysis of our outcomes and uses a historical lens to identify particular events and projects that may have contributed to differences of sentiments across demographics. It is found that although there are significant patterns of variation in identification among demographics, the concept of national identity remains strong. Due to significant limitations, the findings in this study should be considered preliminary. However, they should help to re-inform and update parochial discourses of ethnic attachment in South Sudan, and should add to larger discourses of national-identity and the nation state in many sub-Saharan African countries.

What motivates the emergence of secessionist movements, and why do individuals support secession once it becomes a salient issue? Scholars have argued that identitarian and economic factors motivate the emergence of secessionism and shape individuals’ preferences on secession, but they have examined only social groups among which secessionist movements have emerged and have not identified the specific ways in which identitarian and economic motivations shape secessionism in different types of regions. My project pioneers a novel approach to secessionism by identifying the universe of potentially secessionist social groups and introducing a theory of why the causal processes motivating secessionism might be different for different regions or groups. Using large-N cross-national analyses, case studies, interviews, and surveys, I examine how cultural identity and economic dynamics shape secessionism across a variety of contexts.

I test traditional theories of secessionism using an original dataset containing the universe of potentially secessionist social groups in Europe and the former Soviet Union. To reduce bias from selecting cases on the outcome of interest, my dataset includes a set of groups with potential but unrealized secessionism alongside groups that mobilized for secession. I show that theories that emphasize the role of natural resources and relative deprivation in motivating secessionism lose their explanatory power when tested over this improved sample.

I supplement this quantitative analysis by investigating the systematic reasons why economic grievances motivate secessionists in some places while identity-based grievances motivate secessionism in others. Through interviews, ethnographic research, and process tracing, I examine secessionism in Catalonia, Montenegro, Quebec, and Scotland. I show that in Scotland, economic factors have primacy in motivating secessionism, whereas identity-based factors drive secessionism in Quebec. In Catalonia, identitarian and materialist concerns interact to motivate secessionism, while anti-regime pressures encouraged secessionism in Montenegro.

I then examine survey data from Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to explore how cultural identity, socioeconomic status, and partisanship predict support for secession. I show that while regional identity is generally a strong predictor of support for secession, socioeconomic status and partisanship are weaker indicators, which problematizes traditional theories of public opinion and suggests that secession is fundamentally distinct from other political issues.

This project advances our identification of the causal mechanisms behind secessionism at both the cross-national and individual levels. My cross-national analysis shows that identity and economic factors are indeed important drivers of secessionism, while disaggregating secessionist regions shows how these factors shape secessionism in different contexts.

In this dissertation, I investigate challenges to the delivery of public services to citizens in young democracies. Focusing on the elite actors whose daily job it is to implement development programs, I seek to better understand why politicians and civil servants behave in the ways that they do, and in particular, why each actor may be motivated to engage in misconduct. Regarding development, I focus on the provision and construction of local public goods, such as classrooms, health clinics, and water wells. To build new infrastructure, politicians and bureaucrats must plan projects, select beneficiary communities and award contracts to firms as part of a (theoretically) competitive procurement process. Despite considerable investments in new infrastructure, the results are often disappointing, and corrupt procurement practices are often to blame. It is puzzling to understand why civil servants administer corrupt procurement deals, when it is politicians who gain from this misconduct, and when such behavior conflicts with norms of bureaucratic integrity.

My central argument is that bureaucrats in Ghana engage in corruption because politicians retain discretionary control over their careers. Therefore, the introduction of meritocratic hiring is not enough to protect against widespread corruption because unchecked politicians hold strong incentives to distort administrative processes. These incentives, I argue, stem from politicians' need to generate funds to finance political parties and election campaigns. In short, experienced and professional bureaucrats engage in corruption, even when they do not personally benefit from it, because refusing to do so can jeopardize their livelihoods and interfere in their careers.

My theory calls into question the traditional view in the literature of bureaucratic delegation that giving politicians greater control over bureaucrats improves policy outcomes. I argue that while granting politicians oversight tools -- such as control over bureaucratic transfers, salaries, or promotions -- may align bureaucratic incentives with politicians' goals, it can weaken overall government accountability to the citizenry by allowing politicians to suborn bureaucrats to enable corrupt activities.

Methodologically, I adopt a mixed-methods approach. I combine data from an original survey of local government bureaucrats (N=864), with qualitative data from interviews with bureaucrats, politicians, development practitioners and local governance experts, as well as observational data from a new database of local government bureaucrats (N=40,000). In my survey with bureaucrats, I use experimental and sensitive measurement techniques to measure partisan bias in the allocation of projects across communities and the awarding of contracts to companies.

Overall, my results suggest that meritocracy, increasing the pay of civil servants, and increased levels of bureaucratic monitoring may do little to improve the delivery of public services in environments where bureaucrats continue to be controlled by politicians who hold strong incentives to capture state funds.