Peer-reviewed article · 2021
Sustained Government Engagement Improves Subsequent Pandemic Risk Reporting in Conflict Zones
Dotan Haim, Nico Ravanilla, and Renard Sexton · American Political Science Review 115(2): 717-724
In brief
Government outreach to conflict-affected villages in the Philippines paid off during Covid-19: village leaders previously engaged by the state were 20% more likely to report pandemic risk information.
Abstract
Community information sharing is crucial to a government's ability to respond to a disaster or a health emergency, such as a pandemic. In conflict zones, however, citizens and local leaders often lack trust in state institutions and are unwilling to cooperate, risking costly delays and information gaps. We report results from a randomized experiment in the Philippines regarding government efforts to provide services and build trust with rural communities in a conflict-affected region. We find that the outreach program increased the probability that village leaders provide time-sensitive pandemic risk information critical to the regional Covid-19 Task Force by 20%. The effect is largest for leaders who, at baseline, were skeptical about government capacity and fairness and had neutral or positive attitudes towards rebels. A test of mechanisms suggests that treated leaders updated their beliefs about government competence and shows that neither security improvement nor project capture by the rebels are primary drivers. These findings highlight the important role that government efforts to build connections with conflict-affected communities can play in determining public health outcomes during times of national emergencies.
Research annotationQuestion, variables, design, findings, and mechanism at a glance▾
- Research question
- Does prior government engagement in conflict zones make citizens more willing to cooperate with the state during a later crisis?
- Independent variable (X)
- Assignment to a government outreach program in which elected village leaders met every six weeks with program officers from civilian line agencies, facilitated by police community relations officers, to match constituents to services such as job training, seedling distribution, and entrepreneurship packages. The program ran from October 2019 until meetings were halted in early March 2020, so the entire treatment predates the Covid-19 lockdown.
- Dependent variable (Y)
- Whether the village leader responded to the regional Covid-19 Task Force within five days of being asked, providing local risk information on recent travel to Manila, at-risk community members, and apparent symptoms.
- Identification strategy
- Preregistered two-level cluster-randomized controlled trial in the conflict-affected Bicol Region of the Philippines, sampling 10 villages in each of 80 municipalities. Forty municipalities were assigned to treatment and forty to control, and within each treated municipality five of the ten villages were assigned to treatment, yielding 200 treated and 600 control villages. Standard errors are clustered at the municipal level, and effects are reported with and without pretreatment covariates. Outcome data were collected by interviewers who did not know villages' treatment status.
- Main findings
- Treated village leaders were 10 percentage points more likely to respond with timely risk information, 61 percent against 51 percent, a 20 percent increase over the control mean. The result holds against all control villages, against control villages within treated municipalities, and against villages in control municipalities, and a comparison of control villages across treated and control municipalities returns a precisely estimated null, indicating no within-municipality spillovers. Effects are largest where leaders held neutral to favorable prior attitudes toward the insurgency, reaching 24 percentage points among pro-rebel leaders against only 7 points among anti-rebel leaders, and are concentrated among leaders who previously believed the government lacked capacity to provide services.
- Mechanism
- Treated leaders updated their beliefs about government competence. Tests rule out security improvement and rebel capture of projects as the primary drivers.
- Why it matters
- Shows that investments in state-society ties in conflict zones pay off in unrelated future emergencies, connecting statebuilding to public health outcomes.
- Speaks to
- statebuilding in conflict zonestrust in governmentinformation provision and public healthcounterinsurgency and civilian cooperation
Cite
@article{haim2021pandemic,
title = {Sustained Government Engagement Improves Subsequent Pandemic Risk Reporting in Conflict Zones},
author = {Dotan Haim and Nico Ravanilla and Renard Sexton},
journal = {American Political Science Review},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1017/S0003055420001148},
}