Essays in Political Accountability

This thesis is composed by three independent essays on the limits of political accountability. In the first essay I analyze an extremely stylized model of political agency with two dimensional outcomes. I show that the non-contractible nature of rewards to the agent (the politician) is especially taxing when the voters want to control outcomes in more than one dimension. I compare and contrast this environment with traditional multitasking analyses in the context of the theory of the firm. The second essay examines why political accountability has failed so miserably in postcolonial, sub-saharan Africa. I provide a theory based on the exploitation of ethnic divisions by self-interested but weak rulers. This cleavages allow the leaders to expropriate resources from the citizenry, included their own ethnic supporters and still remain in power. The model predicts ethnic bias, patronage, inefficient policies and absence of public investment. The third essay is an empirical analysis of legislative performance in the North Carolina General Assembly. Using a new dataset I am able to show that legislators find their good performance rewarded both within the state legislature and in their electoral careers. These findings have relevance for the discussion on term limits and the theoretical modeling of political agency. Thesis Supervisor: Daron Acemoglu Title: Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics Thesis Supervisor: James M. Snyder Title: Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Economics and Political Science