Oil and aid revenue produce equal demands for accountability as taxes in Ghana and Uganda.

Received wisdom argues that citizens more readily demand accountability from government for taxes than for nontax revenue from oil or foreign aid, giving rise to an important mechanism underlying the "resource curse," which posits that nontax revenue causes citizen quiescence and hampers government accountability. However, in developing countries, obfuscation through value-added taxes and strong popular feelings of ownership over all revenues may minimize differences across revenue sources. Identical experiments on representative samples of Ghanaians and Ugandans, and similar experiments on members of parliament, probe the effects of different sources and delivery channels of government revenues on citizens' actions to monitor governments and members of parliament (MPs') beliefs about accountability pressures. Roughly half of all citizens take action to monitor all 3 sources. However, neither Ghanaians nor Ugandans demand more accountability for taxes than oil or aid when the revenues go to the government. MPs likewise saw no difference. Citizens do differentiate between aid money given to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) compared with revenues delivered to the government. Findings are robust to numerous alternatives and subgroups. Against strong expectations from prior research, little evidence exists showing that taxes strengthen citizens' demands for accountability or that MPs perceive differences across revenue sources in these 2 representative African countries. However, aid channeled through NGOs motivates more accountability pressures.

SMS texts on corruption help Ugandan voters hold elected councillors accountable at the polls.

Many politicians manipulate information to prevent voters from holding them accountable; however, mobile text messages may make it easier for nongovernmental organizations to credibly share information on official corruption that is difficult for politicians to counter directly. We test the potential for texts on budget management to improve democratic accountability by conducting a large (n = 16,083) randomized controlled trial during the 2016 Ugandan district elections. In cooperation with a local partner, we compiled, simplified, and text-messaged official information on irregularities in local government budgets. Verified recipients of messages that described more irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 6% less often; verified recipients of messages conveying fewer irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 5% more often. The messages had no observable effect on votes for incumbent council chairs, potentially due to voters' greater reliance on other sources of information for higher profile elections. These mixed results suggest that text messages on budget corruption help voters hold some politicians accountable in settings where elections are not free and fair.

Behavioral nudges in social media ads show limited ability to encourage COVID-19 vaccination across countries.

Behavioral nudges in Facebook ads reached nearly 15 million people across six diverse countries and, consequently, many thousands took the step of navigating to governments' vaccine signup sites. However, none of the treatment ads caused significantly more vaccine signup intent than placebo uniformly across all countries. Critically, reporting the descriptive norm that 87% of people worldwide had either been vaccinated or planned vaccination-social proof-did not meaningfully increase vaccine signup intent in any country and significantly backfired in Taiwan. This result contradicts prominent prior findings. A charge to "protect lives in your family" significantly outperformed placebo in Taiwan and Turkey but saw null effects elsewhere. A message noting that vaccination significantly reduces hospitalization risk decreased signup intent in Brazil and had no significant effects in any other country. Such heterogeneity was the hallmark of the study: some messages saw significant treatment effects in some countries but failed in others. No nudge outperformed the placebo in Russia, a location of high vaccine skepticism. In all, widely touted behavioral nudges often failed to promote vaccine signup intent and appear to be moderated by cultural context.

Voter information campaigns and political accountability: Cumulative findings from a preregistered meta-analysis of coordinated trials.

Voters may be unable to hold politicians to account if they lack basic information about their representatives' performance. Civil society groups and international donors therefore advocate using voter information campaigns to improve democratic accountability. Yet, are these campaigns effective? Limited replication, measurement heterogeneity, and publication biases may undermine the reliability of published research. We implemented a new approach to cumulative learning, coordinating the design of seven randomized controlled trials to be fielded in six countries by independent research teams. Uncommon for multisite trials in the social sciences, we jointly preregistered a meta-analysis of results in advance of seeing the data. We find no evidence overall that typical, nonpartisan voter information campaigns shape voter behavior, although exploratory and subgroup analyses suggest conditions under which informational campaigns could be more effective. Such null estimated effects are too seldom published, yet they can be critical for scientific progress and cumulative, policy-relevant learning.