Nudging Good People into Public Service: Evidence from a Field Experiment in the Philippines

Incompetent and dishonest politicians are common in developing countries. Scholars who write about corruption and poor governance tend to take the existence of bad politicians as a given and focus on the damage that they do. Few study the ways in which politicians are recruited in order to improve that process. Some scholars acknowledge the need to encourage the creation of a political class that is competent and honest. But none have gone further by conducting real-world experiments to evaluate the efficacy of screening and incentivizing competent and virtuous citizens to stand for public office, that is, how to nudge good people to become politicians in the first place.

Dr. Ravanilla will describe a policy intervention designed to attract able and ethical candidates to public service. Can a leadership-training workshop and non-monetary status rewards be used to screen and motivate good people to serve the public good? His answer is yes. The results of a randomized field experiment among youth running for an elective post in the Philippines show that such an intervention is indeed feasible and can be effective in motivating able and moral individuals to seek public office while at the same time discouraging candidates who do not meet these criteria.

Nico Ravanilla will begin an assistant professorship in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, in September 2016.  The Southeast Asia Research Group named him a Young Southeast Asia Fellow for 2015-16.  He earned his PhD in political science and public policy at the University of Michigan in 2015.