Essays on the political economy of service provision

Service provision has often been studied as an outcome of political decisions and processes. This dissertation examines how the distribution of service provision and its electoral outcomes are also contingent on local social structures. It contributes to theoretical knowledge on the political economy of service provision by introducing novel arguments that explain spatial and temporal variations in state capacity and government services, non-state services, and electoral returns to service provision. The first paper develops a theory based on bureaucratic efficiency and argues that bureaucratic efficiency increases with social proximity among bureaucrats. I find that social proximity, as proxied by geographic proximity, increases bureaucratic efficiency. However, in line with theoretical expectations, geographic proximity is less likely to lead to high bureaucratic efficiency in socially fragmented network structures or when there are ethnic divisions between bureaucrats.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Bozçağa, Tuğba.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Fotini Christia.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130602

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130602