The challenge
Funds for village road projects were being lost to corruption.
The case
In Indonesian villages building roads with a national development program, researchers randomly raised the chance of a government audit from 4% to 100% in some villages and boosted community participation in monitoring meetings in others. Engineers then estimated how much money was missing. The near-certain audit reduced missing expenditures by about 8 percentage points. Encouraging villagers to monitor had little overall effect, partly because residents had little information and incentive to challenge officials.
Why the results were mixed
Credible top-down audits cut corruption; community monitoring alone did not. Grassroots oversight needs real information and power to work.
Sources
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