Political Responsiveness, Information Provision, and Capacity Gaps

To investigate whether lack of information is one reason politicians may be unresponsive to voter preferences, we conduct a randomized control trial with senior politicians in Pakistan that collects citizen preferences using Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR allows politicians to script questions for citizens and allows the latter to respond on their cell phones. There is strong politician interest in soliciting opinions via IVR; additionally, response rates by citizens are relatively high. Nonetheless, politicians fail to use the new information to modify on-the-ground engagement with voters or service delivery. Nor do we observe improvements in citizen evaluations of politicians or in their electoral support for them. A forecasting exercise shows that experts find these null outcomes unexpected. Our findings reveal that even eager and informed politicians may be unable to respond to citizen preferences due to institutional capacity constraints, highlighting limits of information-centric theories of accountability.