IGC 2 for Governance Institutions (Sierra Leone)

Sierra Leone faces many challenges with decentralization and provision of basic public goods. This makes collective action among citizens important, either to fund local public goods, or for citizens organizing demands to the state. As a result, local leaders are key to help people solve these problems. But as in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone has both traditional and democratically elected leaders co-existing and there is a conflict between responsibilities and scope of work between local councils and traditional authorities. One key dimension in which this conflict occurs is tax collection, as traditional leaders have been historically responsible for collecting taxes but, since the decentralization reforms of 2005, local councils were also endowed with the capacity to collect own source revenues to fund their operations. Nonetheless, local councils’ capacity to self-finance their operations is very limited, and thus they conflict with traditional authorities who are better positioned to mobilize resources from citizens. This study aims to compare these two types of leaders in terms of how they provide incentives for people to cooperate. It will use an artefactual field experiment where participants from rural communities in Sierra Leone encounter a collective action problem embedded in a real project run by an NGO. Specifically, participants will take part in a community activity where they will have to decide to ether keep money for themselves or contribute to a community project benefiting many people. Participants will be randomly assigned to a situation where either their local chief or their local councilor will help the NGO by incentivizing contributions from participants. Through this, the study will compare leaders within communities and their effectiveness in raising contributions