Bureaucratic Deliberation and Performance: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin

Abstract

Bureaucratic performance depends not only on individual incentives and ability but also on shared expectations about how others within the organization behave. This paper examines whether such collective beliefs can be shifted through structured deliberation among bureaucrats. We conducted an institutional experiment with 20 municipal administrations in Benin, where bureaucrats in treated municipalities held a series of meetings to deliberate on information from audit reports, surveys of bureaucrats, and citizen feedback, while control municipalities continued with business as usual. Using administrative audit data from 2014 to 2019, we find that deliberation increased municipal performance scores by 6.8 percentage points (8.7 percent relative to the control mean), with effects concentrated among municipalities with below-average baseline performance. Citizen experiences of service delivery also improved modestly but not significantly. Survey evidence indicates that deliberation altered bureaucrats’ beliefs about enforcement and reduced trust in colleagues and the municipal council, consistent with the idea that lower interpersonal trust can limit collusive behavior in low-accountability environments (Tirole, 1986). The results highlight deliberation as a low-cost management practice that enhances bureaucratic performance by reshaping collective expectations and as a promising form of institutional experimentation for strengthening state capacity.