Publication: Changes in Subjective Well-Being in Timor-Leste on the Path to Independence
Abstract
In countries emerging from ethnic and civil conflict, standard approaches to measuring trends in well-being do not account for the empowerment of the population due to the political liberalization, which is critical for the successful implementation of zero-generation reforms. They also fail to do justice to the often massive population displacement unleashed by the violence which makes a comparison of living standards from before to after the conflict problematic. Using the example of Timor-Leste, this paper demonstrates how subjective, objective, and recall information collected through a cross-sectional household survey can be combined to provide a rich profile of trends in well-being from the pre- to post-conflict stage. By differencing across pre- and post-conflict periods, the regression estimates are robust with regard to psychological attributes or other time-invariant personal traits. The analysis shows that the changes in self-rated welfare and power in Timor-Leste broadly corresponded to changes recorded by objective indicators of economic resources, economic shocks, and ethno-linguistic status.
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Publication Well-Being Buring a Time of Change : Timor-Leste on the Path to Independence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-01)Countries undergoing fundamental economic and political transformations might experience differential adjustments in material well-being and empowerment. The author evaluates self-rated welfare and power changes in Timor-Leste covering the period prior to the 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia to the eve of independence in end 2001. Drawing on the first nationally representative household survey and village census, he shows how subjective, objective, and recall information can be combined to provide a rich profile of trends in well-being from the pre- to post-conflict stage. The author s analysis shows that changes in self-rated welfare and power broadly corresponded to changes recorded by objective indicators. While economic well-being improved little, empowerment increased dramatically. The changes were not uniform across the population but some groups benefited more than others. The evidence for Timor-Leste is consistent with these hypotheses: a) Economic resources increase welfare, and more than power; b) Social resources increase power, and more than welfare; c) Welfare winners have low initial economic resources; d) Power winners have high social resources; and e) Economic shocks reduce welfare and power, but welfare more than power.Publication Tokenism or Agency? The Impact of Women's Reservations on Village Democracies in South India(2008)There is increasing interest in whether improving the participation of women in government will lead to more gender equality. We test this with data collected from South India, using a natural experiment that randomly reserves one-third of all presidencies in democratically elected village councils (panchayats) for women candidates. Previous research has found that such "reservations" result in policy decisions that are closer to the preferences of women; qualitative research has argued, conversely, that it results in token appointments in which women are appointed by elites and are poorly educated and aged. We do not find evidence in favor of the tokenism hypothesis, finding that women leaders are drawn from the upper end of the quality distribution of women. However, we find that female leaders perform no differently than male leaders. 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Over the past two to three decades, many governments have begun to replace centralized bureaucracies with different forms of partially patrimonial systems, including various forms of decentralization and partial privatization. This article uses both Weber and contemporary agency theory to evaluate the success of these new forms of partially patrimonial administration and to suggest ways in which they could be made more effective.Publication The Political Economy of Village Sanitation in South India: Capture or Poor Information?(2010)Despite efforts to mandate and finance local governments' provision of environmental sanitation services, outcomes remain poor in the villages surveyed in the four South Indian states. The analysis indicates some key issues that appear to hinder improvements in sanitation. Local politicians tend to capture sanitary infrastructure and cleaning services for themselves, while also keeping major village roads reasonably well-served. Their decisions suggest, however, that they neither understand the health benefits of sanitation, nor the negative externalities to their own health if surrounding areas are poorly served. Our findings suggest that improving sanitary outcomes requires disseminating information on the public goods nature of their health benefits, as well as on the local government's responsibilities. It also requires putting public health regulations in place, along with measures to enable accountability in service provision.Publication Linking Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Decentralisation(2010)Decentralisation offers significant opportunities to improve government accountability by exerting stronger pressures both from below (demand) and above (supply). The literature contains many examples, however, where the potential has not been realised, partly because decentralisation reforms have often been introduced without thinking through their accountability implications. Even when accountability is taken into account, the efforts tend to emphasise either the supply or the demand side of the equation, but not both. Drawing on the sets of literature on fiscal, administrative and political decentralisation, this article presents a methodology for studying this.
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