How many Tetri are in a Lari? The importance of municipal statistics for good governance

[Note: This post was co-published with Eurasianet and authored by Koba Turmanidze, CRRC-Georgia's Director.] 

The government of Georgia committed itself to collect and publish policy-relevant data in a timely manner under the Open Government Partnership. Yet while most ministries and state agencies are happy to provide national-level statistics, they often fail to break them down to the municipal level. 

As a result, if you think about it in monetary terms, the current system means that officials do not know how many tetri are in a lari. 

Reliable municipal statistics can contribute to good governance in several important ways. First, municipal-level data can let citizens assess the quality of state services they receive compared to other municipalities, or to the national average. Second, municipal-level data can help policy makers improve the targeting of programs, and therefore, spend public money more efficiently. Third, it can help both government and citizens evaluate the successes and failures of municipal governance.

The following scenarios highlight the benefits of comprehensive data on a local level: 

Imagine you want to move from one town to another for a better job. You consider moving with your spouse and a child of school age. However, your spouse does not want to move, arguing that your town has much better public schools than the new one. In such cases, it would help if you could look at municipal-level education data to see if schools in the two towns are similar or different in terms of the student-teacher ratio, exam scores, the success rate on national examinations, etc. 

Imagine you are a civil servant and are working with an investor to build a new factory in a municipality. You want the factory to be built in the municipality where its social impact will be highest. To persuade the investor, you use municipal statistics to demonstrate that the municipality of your choice has high unemployment, yet its labor force is younger and better trained than in comparable municipalities. 

Imagine you are an analyst in a think tank and your task is to advise the government on whether to extend a poverty reduction program or not. The government claims the program helped to reduce poverty by two percentage points nationwide, but you have reasons to suspect that the reduction happened in certain settlements, whereas in others the program had a negligible impact. You look at relevant data on the program and poverty statistics, and conclude that the program’s effect across municipalities was truly unequal. Importantly, it made no difference in the most economically deprived communities. Therefore, you advise the government to redesign the program to improve its impact on the communities with the highest poverty rates, before pouring more money into it. 

Unfortunately, we can only imagine the above. These three scenarios remain purely hypothetical, since, in Georgia, reliable municipal data is rarely available on education, employment and poverty. 

CRRC-Georgia’s repeated interactions with a multitude of state agencies over the past three years have uncovered at least three problems regarding municipal data. First, when municipal data of potentially good quality exists, it is often not processed and made available to the public. Second, if municipal data is accessible, its quality is often questionable. Third, municipal data often does not exist at all, since the responsible agency does not recognize its value, or is unable to collect it due to lack of relevant training. 

Below are three concrete cases that correspond to these three problems: 

Case 1: Until recently, the National Assessment and Examination Center (NAEC) maintained detailed and high-quality data on the results of the Unified National Exams (UNE) for many years. The data allowed one to see which municipality’s and even school’s students were most successful in the exams. Such data was not proactively shared on the Center’s website, but was available upon request. The situation changed when the Center introduced electronic applicant registration in 2011. Under the new system, an applicant’s place of residence and school was no longer recorded. However, the Center could still identify the municipality based on an applicant’s ID number. 

For the 2015 UNE results, NAEC processed the data this way and made the data file available on its website. However, when CRRC-Georgia requested the same data for 2016, the Center turned the request down, arguing it no longer processed data per municipality, and would not do so for our sake. As a result, it is no longer possible to analyze municipal- or school-level performance and map it as we did in this blog post. At the time, this map drew attention to large differences in educational attainment countrywide, including an important fact – that Unified National Exam scores in Upper Ajara were among the worst in the country. In part in response to this fact, AGL, a Norwegian company building a hydro-electric dam in upper Ajara created a tutoring program for students in the region to help them prepare for the exams. If the NAEC withholds such data, it will hinder the ability of interested parties to spot trends and develop remedial policies.

Case 2: The Social Service Agency (SSA) is a leading organization in the country in terms of providing access to comprehensive data on poverty and targeted social assistance at the national and municipal levels. Among other statistics, the Agency reports monthly data on applicants and recipients of social aid. The 2014 census data, however, casts some doubt on whether the SSA poverty statistics are trustworthy. 

The scale of mismatch between the agency’s data and the 2014 census results is evident from the chart below. Using Geostat’s population estimates, the agency calculates the share of the population registered for targeted social assistance in each municipality. The census was conducted in November 2014, so it is possible to re-calculate the share of those registered for targeted social assistance based on the census data and compare it with the agency’s estimates. 

Let’s take the extreme case of Lentekhi. The agency reported that 44 percent of the population applied for targeted social assistance. When the census data is used, the finding is that 89 percent of Lentekhi residents registered for social assistance. Thus, the SSA estimate was 45 percentage points lower than the actual percentage. The chart below plots the differences between the shares of the population registered for targeted social assistance, as calculated and reported by the SSA on the one hand, and updated calculations based on the 2014 census data on the other, for each municipality in November 2014. Overall, the agency underestimated the share of applicants by 14 percentage points, on average. However, publicly available data has yet to be adjusted based on the 2014 census.    

Case 3: In a number of cases municipal statistics do not exist. Measuring the scale of economic activity (level of employment by employment sector, total value added, etc.) in every municipality would require large-scale surveys that are both time-consuming and expensive. Geostat’s periodic Integrated Household Survey cannot provide this information, due to the cost that such a large sample size would entail. 

However, the Revenue Service (RS) under the Ministry of Finance of Georgia could help solve this challenge. Based on taxpayers’ IDs, the agency can provide information about the number of taxpayers, be it individuals or organizations, and amount of taxes collected in each municipality. This information would serve as a good proxy of economic activity by municipality. However, as the RS told CRRC-Georgia, it can only break the data down for regions. Officials claimed that breaking the data down further was not possible. 

Undoubtedly, the collection and analysis of municipal data requires additional resources. However, the three concrete cases highlighted above show that a little increase in awareness regarding municipal data could go a long way toward promoting better municipal governance in important ways. Investors could have clearer insight into the best investment destinations, for one. Civil society groups would also have better ways to assess the successes and failures of government actions. Citizens likewise would have a better idea of where their place of residence stands compared to other parts of the country, or the national average. Government could have better tools to ensure equal access to services in the country, or to achieve efficiencies in the provision of services. 

All of this is possible. Unfortunately, it is not reality. And as a result, the government doesn’t know how many tetri are in a lari.

New OECD/CRRC-Georgia report calls for more coherent migration management in Georgia

From 2013 to 2016, the OECD Development Centre coordinated a EU-funded project on Interrelations between Public Policies, Migration and Development (IPPMD) in ten developing countries including Armenia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Haiti, Morocco and the Philippines. The project collected empirical data to assess the development potential of migration in these countries and develop policy recommendations that would help make the most of this potential. Project findings for Georgia were presented during the launch of the report in Tbilisi on March 28, 2017.

(1)Opening remarks by Mr. Kaido Sirel, Deputy Head of Cooperation, EU Delegation to Georgia.
(2)OECD's Jason Gagnon presenting major findings of the project in Georgia
(3) CRRC Researcher Mariam Kobaladze and conference participants during a break out session.

In Georgia, IPPMD project’s key partners were the State Commission on Migration Issues of Georgia and CRRC-Georgia. The focus of the project was the impact of emigration, remittances and return migration, on agriculture, the labour market, education and investment/financial services. Within the project, a total of 2260 households were interviewed nationwide, including 972 households with migrant members (current or return international migrants) and 1288 households without such members. In addition, 71 comminity interviews were conducted with representatives of local authorities and community leaders, and 27 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders representing civil society, international organizations and academic institutions.

While, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), total migrant stock from Georgia decreased through the 2000s, according to the latest census data, 24% of those born in Georgia currently live abroad. As the IPPMD report claims, “[e]migration … can … benefit the country by relieving a congested labour market, providing opportunities for women to increase their economic independence and generating incentives to upgrade skills. However, realising these positive impacts depends on the right conditions being in place,” i.e. efficient evidence-based policies.

The IPPMD survey collected impressive empirical data that allows us to compare emigrant and non-emigrant households in Georgia. Accodring to the IPPMD data, emigrants from Georgia are younger compared to the average age of household members remaining in Georgia – respectively, 42 and 47 years old. Unsurprisingly, 80% of current emigrants are reported to have left in search of work.

IPPMD data also provides interesting and up to date insights about the role of international remittances for households in Georgia. According to the World Bank, remittances constitute 12% of Georgian GDP. About USD 2 billion was estimated to be remitted to Georgia in 2014, up from about USD 300 million in 2004. The development potential of remittances is, however, not fully used, since the remittances are mostly used on consumption or real estate for the households’ personal use. A very small share of remittances is allocated for productive investments. They do, however, tend to increase expenditures on household members’ education.

The IPPMD report argues that the development potential of remittances can be increased if relevant policies are in place. According to the IPPMD findings, households that report receiving remittances are more likely to also have a bank account in urban settlements, but not in rural settlements. This finding calls for the development of the formal banking sector in rural settlements, and also for offering cheaper and faster formal money transfer channels. The report further argues that “[t]raining those who receive remittances in using money transfer operators and financial services more effectively may help to lower the costs and to use remittances in a more productive way. The IPPMD data show that very few households … (1%) have participated in a financial training programme in the past five years.” The so-called social remittances of migration, i.e. knowledge and experiences that the migrants bring back to the country, are no less important, and their role could also be crucial for the country’s development.

The State Commission on Migration Issues of Georgia has been coordinating migration management since 2010. Continuing to integrate migration-related issues into major policy documents, including the national development strategy, and thus developing a more coherent policy framework, will help to use the development potential of migration more effectively.

The report this blog is based on is available here.

CRRC’s Fourth Annual Methodological Conference: Research for Development in the South Caucasus

CRRC’s fourth annual Methodological Conference took place on June 24 and 25, 2016 in Tbilisi. Over 50 participants representing numerous institutions from seven countries attended.

David Lee, Chairman of CRRC’s Board of Trustees, opened the conference highlighting the importance of the issues discussed at the conference not only for the region, but also for the world.

The conference had a wide variety of workshops, such as Koen Geven’s  workshop on Causal Inference and Estimating Treatment Effects and  Julie A. George’s Methodological Approaches to Estimating Voter Fraud.

With four conference sessions focused on migration, politics, ideology and media, and gender inequalities in the labor market, the conference participants – academics and policymakers alike – had the opportunity to discuss the challenges with and ways forward towards generating more reliable knowledge on the issues.

CRRC-Georgia’s President, Koba Turmanidze, closed the conference noting that next year’s Methodological Conference will continue to focus on policy research and methodological issues, which can lead to better development policy in the region.

For more information, the full conference program can be accessed here.

Trends in Scientific Output in the South Caucasus: 1996-2012

Increases in the quantity of peer reviewed publications, on the one hand, and citations, on the other hand, are believed to measure scientific progress. In the 1960s, efforts to document, explore and explain trends in scientific progress gave rise to the quantitative study of science and science policy – Scientometrics. The SCImago Journal & Country Rank Portal covers the period from 1996 to 2014 and provides indicators that help us examine the dynamics of scientific output worldwide, including in the countries of the South Caucasus (SC). In this blog post, we present the following indicators: 

• Number of publications in peer reviewed journals by academics affiliated with the country’s scientific institutions;
• The ratio of cited peer reviewed publications to uncited ones;
• International collaboration, measured by the ratio of peer reviewed publications co-authored by individuals from different countries.

The number of peer reviewed publications by authors from all three South Caucasus countries has increased between 1996 and 2012. The chart below shows a notable increase after 2002.

Importantly, the number of both cited and uncited publications has been increasing in each scientific discipline. The ratio of cited to uncited publications, however, has declined slightly, as the chart below shows. 

At the same time, international collaboration, measured as the ratio of SC authors’ peer reviewed publications co-authored with authors from other countries, seems to have increased between 1996 and 2012. As the chart below shows, Azerbaijan falls behind, while international collaboration is slowly but steadily increasing in Armenia and Georgia. 

To sum up, the number of peer reviewed publications is the most rapidly growing indicator, suggesting positive developments in the scientific community of the countries of the South Caucasus. However, it seems that there is still work to do when it comes to the impact of the publications by scholars in the South Caucasus.

To learn more on the subject, take a look at this comparative analysis of the scientific output of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia; this study which examines trends in the development of science in the CIS countries, and this article (in Georgian) focused on Georgian academic institutions. 

Inequality of Job Opportunities Across the South Caucasus

The World Development Report 2013, which was newly released and presented in Tbilisi a couple of weeks  ago states that, “The concept of equality of opportunity, which can be traced back to John Rawls and Robert Nozick, stems from the idea that an individual’s chances of success in life should not be caused by circumstances that are beyond the individual’s control, such as gender, ethnicity, location of birth, or family background.” The report is mainly devoted to investigating jobs challenges and problems of employment, including unequal opportunities to find a job due to specific circumstances. This report included a chart from the 2006 Life in Transition Survey (LTS) that identifies the level of inequality of job opportunities based on circumstances, age and education across countries (i.e. the “Dissimilarity Index” or D index). Differences in the results among countries can be observed in the table below, yet data from the 2012 Caucasus Barometer (CB) show shifting priorities for obtaining a good job in the South Caucasus countries.

The LTS chart from 2006 indicates that education is a major source of inequality of job opportunities in Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, the inequality D-index for Armenia was approximately 11 times higher than in Georgia and 3 times higher than in Azerbaijan. For Georgia and Azerbaijan, circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, parental education and political affiliation influenced the inequality of job opportunities. In contrast, these circumstances constituted the least share of the D-index in Armenia. Age was found to be least influential in all three countries, yet, it was about 3 times larger in Armenia and Azerbaijan than in Georgia. 

The more recent 2012 CB asked about factors that Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis consider most important for getting a good job in their countries. CB data show that connections is considered to be the most important factor for getting a job in Armenia and Azerbaijan, whereas education is considered to be the most important factor in Georgia. Education is also deemed to be the second most important factor in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Additionally, doing favors for the ‘right’ people stands as the third most important factor in Azerbaijan, while professional abilities is third for Georgia and Armenia. Appearance and age are considered to be more important factors for getting a good job in Armenia than in other two countries, whereas hard work, luck and talent are perceived to hold more weight in Georgia.

This blog has shown that there are different perceptions about how different factors relate to job opportunities in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Whereas education, circumstances and age are shown to be the most basic reasons for job inequality in the LTS survey, connections and education are the dominant factors for getting a good job in all 3 countries according to the CB. 

If you are interested in issues regarding attitudes towards getting a good job please visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis tool.

Aleksey Hovakimyan on Rural & Economic Development in Armenia

While writing his PhD, Aleksey Hovakimyan was a regular user of CRRC-Armenia, often working in the computer lab or the library. We therefore were delighted to hear that his PhD thesis has now been published, and wanted to support him in spreading the word of his book's release.

Hovakimyan's book, Rural Clusters and Structural Transformation: An Exploratory Case Study in Armenia, concerns the change in the structure of an economy as an important process for long-term development. This key process, called structural transformation, reflects the change in the contribution of the agriculture, industry and service sectors within the national economy.

The book also examines the cluster concept, which is generally a geographic concept from regional economics and economic geography. Since its origin, the cluster concept mostly refers to the industry sector, and very little academic literature directly ties structural transformation to rural cluster formation in developing countries. Hovakimyan's work, therefore, tries to do so through an exploratory case study of Armenia, and examines three dimensions: space (cluster concept), time (structural transformation) and levels of change (from national to household level).

The book also provides an overview of relevant theories and approaches, as well as the case analysis helpful to understand the economic behaviour/choice of rural households within the realities of developing countries which have various gaps and shortcomings in infrastructure and institutions.

This work should be especially useful to students, development researchers and practitioners, or anyone else who is interested in rural and economic development. For more information and to purchase the book, go here.

Greatest Threats Facing the World | Data from the 2009 CB & the Global Attitudes Survey

By Jesse Tatum and Vazha Burduli

From environmental catastrophe to violence, our world currently faces serious challenges with long-term consequences. In this context, what do people in the Caucasus consider to be the most acute problems?

Regarding the greatest threats to the world today, the spread of nuclear weapons and poverty are foremost on the minds of people in the South Caucasus, according to the 2009 CB.

The CB asked respondents to choose from a list of six dangers which one they believe poses the greatest threat to the world. In Georgia and Azerbaijan, the spread of nuclear weapons topped the list, with 44 percent and 36 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, in Armenia, poverty was chosen first, with 35 percent, just edging out the threat of the spread of nuclear weapons. Curiously, more people in Azerbaijan seemed to worry about AIDS and infectious diseases -- something still to look into.

The 47-Nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which also asks people which threats currently pose the greatest risk to our world, found that pollution and environmental problems are increasingly taking over the top spots as the most pressing world dangers. (Note that CRRC's question was phrased slightly differently, and offered another option.)

Compared with the Global Attitude Survey's results, people in the South Caucasus are less concerned with pollution and environmental problems than in other parts of the world, especially Sweden, Canada and East Asia (China, S. Korea and Japan).

The amount of data available between the two surveys is extensive indeed. We hope you will check out Pew's report, and then compare other figures with our CB in order to see where South Caucasian's world views fit into the international context. In the future, we plan to post more comparisons of this sort.

New Policy Advice on Migration and Development in Georgia

Migration is a major factor in Georgia. Many Georgians live abroad, and by some estimates the money they send back accounts for nearly 10% of Georgia’s GDP. Did you know that households in rural areas who receive such aid are less likely to be poor, but that in Tbilisi, the opposite is true? Robert Tchaidze from the IMF and Karine Torosyan from CRRC’s partner institution ISET are about to reveal not only who in Georgia migrates, and when and where they go, but also how the country could take advantage of these migration flows in the future.

Their report “Measuring and Optimising the Economic and Social Impacts of Migration in Georgia” is not yet available online, but you can find an early summary. Robert and Karine’s work is part of the global project “Development on the Move” that was created by the Global Development Network and the Institute for Public Policy Research. It aims at analyzing the impact of migration on development around the world, and how these flows can be profited on with adapted public policy, as we had previously mentioned in our blog.

Georgia is one of six countries that have been selected for in-depth quantitative and qualitative studies. In this particular case, CRRC carried out the fieldwork, and we are happy to see our high-quality data used for valuable public policy advice.

Please let us know if you would like to receive the full document once it gets released publicly.

Introducing More Subtitling in Georgia | Policy Supported by Evidence

Georgian parliament is set to debate the introduction of broader subtitling (to replace dubbing) of foreign-language films on television. From the research point of view, this is excellent public policy. There may be some aesthetic disadvantages to subtitling, and viewers may take some time to get used to subtitles rather than voiceovers, but overall the educational advantages far outweigh any possible disadvantage.

Subtitling, rather than dubbing, has long been associated with superior foreign language ability. Countries that subtitle generally tend to be good in foreign languages. Examples include the Scandinavian countries, but also Netherlands. Several transition countries have taken the clever decision to go for subtitling, in order to further boost foreign-language ability. In Georgia (and the Caucasus generally), English is not spoken very widely.

http://mediadeskpoland.eu/upload/PP_Comite_media_280708_FINAL.pdf

Yellow: subtitles; Red: dubbing; Green: voiceover.

Countries that dub systematically tend to be relatively poor in foreign languages, examples including Germany (in spite of fairly high-quality teaching in schools), France, and Spain, and even worse in their pronounciation. Georgia has great opportunities if it develops extensive foreign language skills in English, maintains the skills in Russian, and ideally adds yet other languages (French, Persian, Turkish, German). Subtitling is one important step in that right direction.

The research evidence for this is strong. Danish and Romanian high school students, according to a 2003 Danish study, outperform German and Italian students in English comprehension. Denmark and Romania provide subtitles, Germany and Italy dub foreign-language films. In one study, 25% of Dutch primary school children said that they learned more English from television than at school. Scandinavian success in educational tests is consistently linked to subtitling on TV. Many other experimental setups have demonstrated the positive impact of subtitling on foreign language acquisition, including a better understanding of pronunciation (see Koolstra, 2002). Realistically, Georgia would have to invest dozens of millions to achieve a comparable impact through teaching across schools, and would still not reach the out-of-school population.

However, there is another important argument in favor of subtitling -- but one that is less obvious. Average families in Georgia watch television for around three hours per day. International studies have shown that television has a negative impact on children and youth -- but this impact could be reversed if children watch television in a foreign language, with subtitles. Studies demonstrate that television with subtitles helps children to learn reading (more strictly speaking: text recognition, or "decoding"), since they need to rely on subtitles to recognize what is being said (Koolstra, 1997). In other words, by subtitling, television becomes a powerful educational instrument that strengthens the link to written language per se, including one's own national language.

This draft law is an excellent public policy initiative by the government. It is cheap, comprehensive, turns a potential problem (TV consumption by children and youths) into a real asset, and could increase educational levels. From the research point of view, the available evidence suggests that subtitling deserves unqualified support.

Koolstra, C.M., Peeters, A.L., & Spinhof, H. (2002). The pros and cons of dubbing and subtitling. European Journal of Communication, 17(3), 325-354.

Koolstra, C.M., van der Voort, T.H.A., & van der Kamp, L.J.Th. (1997). Television's Impact on Children's Reading Comprehension and Decoding Skills: A 3-Year Panel Study. Reading Research Quarterly, 32(2), 128–152.

Georgian Perspectives on Aid | Survey Data

How do Georgians look at the influx of foreign aid? And how do they interpret what is coming in? How should it be spent? These are questions that Transparency International wanted to find out about last November. We added the questions to an ongoing survey. The results, in the meantime, have also been published in the Caucasus Analytical Digest, a new online publication that summarizes key findings, and combines them with short analysis pieces.


If the image is too small, click on it to increase it in size.


Interested in more? Check out the Caucasus Analytical Digest, and, for the thoughtful and engaging Transparency International report go directly to their website.

Migration Impact Research in Georgia | Update

As you may recall, we are conducting migration research in Georgia, together with the International School of Economics in Tbilisi (ISET). Here is an update on this larger, Global Development Network-funded project, from a recent GDN Newsletter.

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'Development on the Move' gains global exposure
Representatives of the ‘Development on the Move’ project management team from GDN and ippr shared their research and its methodology at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), attended by over 200 international experts and stakeholders in Manila, Philippines from October 27 - 30 ,2008.

'Development on the Move' was recognized as an innovative and ambitious cross-country research effort to measure migration's impacts and create new analytical tools. The conference participants were provided with a summary report of the early findings from the Jamaica pilot as well as a description of the project.

Meanwhile, the project's country studies are continuing successfully. Approximately 3,000 Colombian and Georgian households have been screened to participate in a national household survey on migration and will shortly provide valuable data on this topic. The surveys in Fiji, Ghana, Macedonia and Vietnam are now completed. The analysis will start in the upcoming weeks and the teams are already looking toward the Development on the Move project workshop in Kuwait, February 1- 2 2009, in conjunction with the GDN Tenth Annual Conference.

For more information on 'Development on the Move', please visit: http://www.gdnet.org/migration

For more information on the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GMFD), go to:
http://www.gfmd2008.org/

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In their last newsletter, GDN also highlighted the ongoing work over the summer. Here, directly from their newsletter:

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Development on the Move: Deeper into the field
Do you live in Colombia or Georgia?

If you do, you may receive a visit from a survey fieldworker for the Development on the Move project, wanting to ask migration related questions.

During the entire month of September, research teams located in Colombia, Georgia, Ghana and Macedonia have been working hard to prepare themselves for the fieldwork. Planning has required the teams to make arrangements with their respective National Statistics Office to access national data on migration/immigration, define a sampling strategy, produce a questionnaire and hire interviewers.

Today, approximately six thousand Fijians, Ghanaians, Macedonians and Vietnamese are familiar with our questionnaire and have agreed to contribute to the project by providing valuable data on migration.

Despite the recent political crisis, the team in Georgia has managed to keep the project going. The Development on the Move management team would like to take the opportunity to express its esteem and support to the survey group in Georgia.

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A little self-advertisement, maybe, but I also wanted to thank my colleagues for truly exceptional work, under trying circumstances. Are you interested in this migration work? Send us an email, so that we can keep you in the loop.

Baku's Urban Change | Commentary and Photography

Interested in urban development? Want to know how outsiders describe the urban experience of Baku? Two young researchers from Germany have set up a blog to follow their project in tracking changes in Baku. Oriana Kraemer and Sebastian Burger take photographs, attend lectures, and comment on what they observe. Given the inflow of sudden wealth, Baku witnesses comprehensive change. A great project, therefore. 

In photos and blog entries they chart the rhythm of the city, how old buildings yield to new ambition, the beautification of façades, and their own encounters. They bring a particularly good eye, and the slideshows add context with the subtitles (see below).

Among other things, the researchers also summarize a recent lecture by Anar Valiyev at CRRC Baku, who compared differences between urban development in Azerbaijan and America. It's a short post, but it's a good entry towards exploring their blog, and the fascinating issue of urban development in Baku.

Ironies of Rural Development Intervention

A story told by a researcher recently returned from Afghanistan, working on a development program. Here he is asking people in a village:
"How often do you clean out your irrigation channel?"
"Every time the NGO pays us."
"Well, when did they last pay you?"
"Two years ago."
"How often did you clean the irrigation channel before the NGO arrived to work in the region?"
"Every year."
Apocryphal as the story may be, it still is a wonderful illustration of how interventions can change the local calculus, substituting for local effort and thereby leading to bizarre, unanticipated distortions. That theme is probably relevant to many rural development programs across the region. If you have any similar stories, let us know.

USAID Political Party Assessment of Europe and Eurasia

Admittedly we forgot to post this earlier, but we believe it is even more important with the upcoming elections in Georgia.

Democracy International, contracted by USAID, released a report on political party assistance across Europe and Eurasia. In order to carry out fieldwork, they selected four countries (Serbia, Romania, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan). There were a wide number of selection criteria variables, including the fact that both party institutes, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), had to be present in the country. In effect, this created an endogeneity problem in the research design, where countries were studied not because of their inherent differences but because the US government had invested the most resources in them. Of course, one country from each region was also chosen ensuring regional variation but also decreasing variation along other axes.
The report is long and includes an impressive theoretical overview. I will discuss only three subjects, which may be of interest to blog readers and discussed in the research:1) the relationship between political party assistance and development 2) survey work and 3) democratization in Georgia. However, I would encourage anyone interested in how USAID operates in the region to read the report and to also analyze it for the subtexts, since all documents put out by the government (even if it is contracted) will attempt to glaze over (or at least cover up) some things.

1
An important theoretical point was raised in the report: almost no literature exists on causality between political party assistance and development. While many other aspects of democracy have been thoroughly explored, most notably elections, how party assistance shapes democracy is a area ripe for study. I think one of the main reasons this has not been studied is the necessity of long-term on the ground fieldwork to trace out the processes of political party development. Since a comparative basis is needed to do so, the work involved seems particularly overwhelming. This could be an interesting place to create teams of local researchers to work on the ground in a well selected group of countries, to trace these processes over time in a standardized way.


2
The article highlights survey work, which is in one of the areas traditionally covered under party assistance and alludes to the fact that surveying has often been overemphasized and targeted not at domestic constituencies, but at the international and development community. Conversely, the report argues that the nexus between the survey work itself and any public policy outcomes is crucial and should be the focus of any polling efforts. If anything, the report underestimates the lack of sophistication that parties have in interpreting these results and the basic lack of understanding that they have in basic research methods. However, I would argue that the answer is not to give up on this work, but to work much harder on helping local government understand the basis of social research. I also think that does not emphasize enough the role between an active research community and public policy research. While the main goal of public opinion research is to inform politicians, the quality of the research often comes under fire in the region and there is no research community capable of demonstrating the quality of the polling and falsifying claims by polling companies that are unskilled. In order to add this concept to that of major international funders, would involve a much more holistic concept of the notion of development, which is generally missing from the debate. Also missing is any mention of the importance of mixing both quantitative and qualitative methods in polling, since the questions asked on the polls also may need to be better refined that they have been in the past.

3
In the Caucasus, Georgia was chosen for the analysis. Interestingly, the report, while of course lauding the Rose Revolution, notes many of the shortcomings of the the United National Movement (UNM) as a party. It uses the term "bandwagoning" usually used in the field of international relations to explain domestic Georgian politics, in which, according to the report, all of the major forces in the country including the media and civil society elites have become closely affiliated with UNM. According to the report, "these bandwagon effects in societies with weak democratic institutions can produce cycles of political convulsion where an initially liberally-oriented dominant party, facing few challenges from an effective opposition, loses dynamism and popular support,thereby engendering new rounds of political revolution." This statement is worrying for the future of Georgian democracy and may help to put the recent Okruashvili scandal into starker perspective.

Again, the full report can be found here.

Baku, Yerevan and Tbilisi: Similarities and Differences

The term metropolis has gained increased intellectual backing in recent years. Indeed, several social researchers have postulated that, due to the dyanism of large cities, cities will continue to look more theoretically similar to each other. A postulate of this theory is that urban and rural communities within the same countries will continue to diverge in terms of behavior on a wide range of issues. Samvel Manukyan's research locates itself within this debate and begins to develop some indicators for comparing urban development across the South Caucasus. The scholar conducted a cross-country analysis of the sociopolitical processes in the capital cities of Baku, Yerevan and Tbilisi.

By analyzing the regional CRRC Data Initiative (DI) 2004 database, Manukyan constructed several typologies of SC capitals’ societies and used mathematical methods to explain the socioeconomic, political, demographic and cultural trends in the region. For instance, he introduced the term “traditionality index,” which is a function of various elements of social behavior. Among other results, he found that men and women in Tbilisi had the most liberal behavior, followed by Yerevan; and that people were most conservative (traditional) in Baku. Overall, Manukyan found that the post-Soviet transition has led to the reconstruction of national self-identification across the South Caucasus capitals. In his 150-page report the researcher developed tools (indices) to measure how the three South Caucasus capitals follow specific patterns in terms of freedom of behavior, as well as the level of tolerance both within and across societies. In his research, the fellow cooperated with Irakli Sakandelidze from Georgia and Inshallah Gafarov from Azerbaijan.

Not surprisingly, the research shows that the South Caucasus cities may not have many of the characteristics of metropolises. However, the research creates a framework to investigate the continuing transitions on the capital cities of Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan.

Manukyan's report, in Armenian, is available here.