Democratic Institutions and Social Capital: Experimental Evidence on School-Based Management From a Developing Country

The study estimates the effects of a democratic school-based management (SBM) project focusing on social capital formation in rural Burkina Faso. To this end, the study conducts a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) on SBM in combination with lab-in-the-field experiments. The RCT demonstrated that SBM significantly increases social capital by way of contributions through public goods games. The study also offers suggestive evidence for differential impacts based on three types of social capital (i.e., bonding, bridging, and linking). Overall, the findings indicate that promoting democratic institutions might improve the service provision and functioning of schools in developing countries. Several novel features of the RCT-based social experiment, lab-in-the-field experiment, and data collection from the field provide insight into the mechanisms that underlie the cited impact.

This study is based on a research project entitled, “Impact Evaluation Analyses for the JICA Projects,” conducted by JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development.