This paper explores how the combined use of Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) and Structural Models can improve the study of politics. We posit that randomized controlled trials can benefit from the insights provided by structural models, particularly for the type of questions posed in...

We model the transition from a chaotic status quo to a more orderly political regime as a two-stage game involving two warring factions and the citizens. The warring factions move first and decide the form of government by (1) inviting an external arbitrator, (2) choosing the people as...

This paper studies the electoral effects of town hall meetings based on programmatic, nonclientelist platforms. The experiment involves the cooperation of leading candidates in a presidential election in Benin. A campaign strategy based solely on these meetings was assigned to randomly selected...

This article investigates voting behavior and policy outcomes when violence can occur after the election. The author finds that under complete information, voters will prefer the weak party—that is, the party that is the least capable of controlling violence. Under incomplete information,...

The authors explain the prevalence of torture by modeling its institutional structure as a game of incomplete information involving the state, the torturer, and the victim. Once the state endorses torture as a mechanism for extracting information, its will is carried out with positive...

The fundamental problem of external validity is not to generalize from one experiment, so much as to experimentally test generalizable theories. That is, theories that explain the systematic variation of causal effects across contexts. Here we show how th

We show that current levels of democracy in Africa are linked to the nature of its independence movements. Using different measures of political regimes and historical data on anti-colonial movements, we find that countries that experienced rural insurgencies tend to have autocratic regimes,...

Today governance and democracy are commonly considered as key factors of success for economic policies in African countries, and, more broadly, for the level of development achieved. The first explanation is that the recurring failure of programs recommended by the international institutions in...

This article provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the correlation between resource wealth and authoritarianism. Building on the rentier state literature, I argue that resource wealth facilitates the consolidation of an already established authoritarian government. Resource...

I conducted a field experiment in Benin to investigate the impact of clientelism on voting behavior. In collaboration with four political parties involved in the 2001 presidential elections, clientelist and broad public policy platforms were designed and run in twenty randomly selected villages...