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A field experiment in rural Liberia is used to study democratic participation in fragile states. Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local patronage systems, and voter vulnerability. To understand the effects of such conditions on democratic expression through elections, the experiment introduced new forms of interaction between rural citizens and third-party actors: (i) civic education and town hall workshops directed by non-governmental organizations in communities over nine months and (ii) security committees that brought rural community representatives into monthly exchange with United Nations peacekeepers. Civic education workshops increased enthusiasm for electoral participation, produced a coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, and increased willingness to report on manipulation. A program combining the two interactions had similar effects. The security committees had negligible effects. Barriers to political information and voter coordination appear to be important but resolvable problems for elections in fragile states.

Access to information --- Accounting --- Allegiance --- Anarchy --- Attrition --- Ballot box --- Banking --- Candidates --- Channels of communication --- Citizen access --- Civic education --- Civics --- Civil society --- Collective action --- Committees --- Community members --- Constituencies --- Constituent --- Constituents --- Crises --- Democracies --- Democracy --- Development economics --- Dictatorial regimes --- E-Government --- Economic conditions --- Economics --- Educational attainment --- Effects --- Election --- Election outcome --- Elections --- Electoral choices --- Electoral information --- Electoral participation --- Electoral systems --- Factions --- Forms of participation --- Free press --- Freedom --- Freedoms --- Governance --- Government --- Governments --- Incentives --- Income --- Information --- Innovations --- International peace --- Labor policies --- Law --- Liberty --- Literacy rates --- Loyalty --- Mobile phone --- Monitoring --- Monopolies --- Motivation --- Nation --- National elections --- Ordinary citizens --- Organizations --- Outcomes --- Parliamentary government --- Participants --- Participation --- Participation variables --- Party members --- Patronage --- Peace --- Pluralism --- Policies --- Policy issues --- Political authority --- Political behavior --- Political change --- Political culture --- Political democracy --- Political discussion --- Political economy --- Political information --- Political landscape --- Political leaders --- Political participation --- Political pluralism --- Political rights --- Political science --- Politicians --- Politics --- Politics and government --- Queen --- Representatives --- Rights --- Security --- Social protections and labor --- Terrorism --- Theory --- Training --- United Nations --- Value --- Vote choice --- Voter participation --- Voter turnout --- Voting --- Voting rights

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Using surveys and administrative data from post-war Liberia, the hypothesis that peacekeeping deployments build peace "from the bottom up" through contributions to local security and local economic and social vitality was tested. The hypothesis reflects official thinking about how peacekeeping works via "peacebuilding." A quasi-experiment was created by applying coarsened exact matching to administrative data used in mission planning, identifying sets of communities that were similarly likely to receive peacekeeping bases. The analysis finds nothing to support claims that deployments increase local security and finds only modest effects on economic or social vitality. Nongovernmental organizations tend to work in areas where deployments are not present, contrary to the hypothesis. Thus, it is less likely that peacekeepers build peace from the bottom up, leaving mechanisms such as signaling and deterrence at the level of leaders as worthy of more attention. For policy, peacekeeping missions should reevaluate their methods for providing local security.

Armed Conflict --- Civil War --- Conflict and Development --- Development --- Health Care Services Industry --- Industry --- Livelihoods --- Peace & Peacekeeping --- Peacekeeping --- Post-Conflict --- Social Cohesion --- Social Development --- Violence

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How can patrimonial local-level governance be reformed? Debates on this topic have focused largely on the possibility of reform via pressure from above (superordinate leaders) or below (citizens). This paper tests whether horizontal pressures from civil society leaders can reform local governance in a context where neither of these mechanisms operates effectively. The study analyzes an experimental intervention in Zimbabwe intended to reduce abuse of power by village heads. Analytic leverage comes from the fact that the 270 study villages were randomly assigned to two variants of the intervention, one in which only village heads were trained on the framework governing village leadership, and one in which civil society leaders were trained alongside village heads. The results suggest that horizontal pressure from civil society leaders increased village heads' knowledge of and compliance with regulated procedures, improved their management of issues and raised citizens' trust in their leadership. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mechanisms through which the trained civil society leaders had these effects suggests they accomplished reform by directly applying social pressure on village heads to abide by regulations.

Governance --- Law and Development --- Public Sector Development --- Social Development

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In Tunisia, while social protection and labor programs are in place, severe challenges including inefficiency, fragmentation, and inequity limit the country's ability to respond to increasing social needs. Gender issues are also one of the critical areas since young women are experiencing even more severe challenges getting into the tight labor market than young men. Unemployment in the MENA region has been a challenge for some time, markedly during the Arab Spring, resulting in the need to create over 50 million jobs in the region in the next decade, to ensure socio-political stability. Unemployment rates are highest in rural and low-income areas. It is in this context that a pilot project of Community Works andLocal Participation (CWLP) was initiated in rural Jendouba in 2015. It was financed by the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) through the World Bank and implemented by the Tunisia Republic's Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment (MVTE). A rigorous randomized control trial (RCT) was embedded in the second phase of the CWLP roll-out (starting in late 2015 and early 2016) and carried out by the World Bank'sDIME Department in partnership with MVET's ONEQ. The study's main objective was to capture the effects of CWLP's cash for work activities. The results of this study, based on a detailed survey of over 4,000 participants and non-participants 6-12 months after completion of project activities, suggested that in general, the CWLP has had positive impacts on the economic well-being of beneficiaries and to a small extent on social and psychological well-being. However, these results also raised concerns that these positive effects may not persist in the long-run, particularly for women who still face huge constraints participating in the tight labor market, which has yet to fully recover to pre-Jasmine revolution levels.

Business Development Services --- Cash Transfers --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Gender --- Gender and Economic Policy --- Livestock --- Migration --- Poverty Reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Services and Transfers to Poor