Why are some governments better able to reform public services than others? Through investigation of a new era of administrative reform, in which digital technologies may be used to facilitate citizens’ access to the state, this analysis provides unanticipated insights into this fundamental question. In contrast to factors such as economic development or electoral competition, I highlight the importance of access to rents, which can dramatically shape the opportunities and threats of reform to political elites. Drawing on sub-national analysis of twenty Indian states, a field experiment, statistical modeling, interviews of citizens, bureaucrats, and politicians, and comparative data from South Africa and Brazil, I show that the extent to which politicians rely on income from petty and grand corruption is closely linked to variation in the timing, management, and comprehensiveness of technology-enabled reforms. The book also illuminates the importance of political constituencies and coalition politics in shaping policy outcomes.

In order to reach a goal of universal access to modern energy services in Africa by 2030, consideration of various electricity sector pathways is required to help inform policy-makers and investors, and help guide power system design. To that end, and building on existing tools and analysis, we present several ‘high-level’, transparent, and economy-wide scenarios for the sub-Saharan African power sector to 2030. We construct these simple scenarios against the backdrop of historical trends and various interpretations of universal access. They are designed to provide the international community with an indication of the overall scale of the effort required e one aspect of the many inputs required. We find that most existing projections, using typical long-term forecasting methods for power planning, show roughly a threefold increase in installed generation capacity occurring by 2030, but more than a tenfold increase would likely be required to provide for full access e even at relatively modest levels of electricity consumption. This equates to approximately a 13% average annual growth rate, compared to a historical one (in the last two decades) of 1.7%.

Citizens awaiting jury service were asked a series of items, in Likert format, to determine their endorsement of various statements about principles to use in setting child support amounts. These twenty items were derived from extant child support systems, from past literature and from Ellman and Ellman’s (2008) Theory of Child Support. The twenty items were found to coalesce into four factors (principles). There were pervasive gender differences in respondent’s endorsement of the principles. More importantly, three of these four principles were systematically reflected, in very rational (if complex) ways, in the respondents’ resolution of the individual child support cases they were asked to decide. Differences among respondents in their endorsement of these three principles accounted for differences in their patterns of child support judgments. It is suggested that the pattern of coherent arbitrariness (Ariely et al., Q J Econ 118(1):73–105, 2003) in those support judgments, noted in an earlier study (Ellman, Braver, & MacCoun, 2009) is thus partially explained, in that the seeming arbitrariness of respondents’ initial support judgments reflect in part their differing views about the basic principles that should decide the cases.

Early jury simulation research, reviewed and meta-anyalysed by MacCoun and Kerr (1988), suggested a leniency asymmetry in criminal jury deliberations such that a given faction favoring acquittal will tend to have a greater chance of prevailing than would an equivalent sized faction favoring conviction. More recently, a handful of field studies of actual juries have reported either no such leniency asymmetry or one in the opposite direction (a severity asymmetry). A potential bias in the coding of these field studies’ data is identified, one that would tend to underestimate any leniency asymmetry. The data from three field studies are re-analyzed after correcting this purported coding bias. The results of these re-analyses show a leniency asymmetry effect, although one that is less pronounced than observed in mock jury studies. It is argued that this difference in degree (not existence) of leniency asymmetry can plausibly be attributed to greater imbalance in evidence strength in the typical actual trial relative to the typical stimulus case in simulation experiments. It is also noted that failure to observe such a leniency asymmetry effect in actual juries would raise important questions about their adherence to the reasonable doubt standard of proof.

Throughout the world, measuring “learning outcomes” is viewed by many stakeholders as a relatively new method to judge the “value added” of colleges and universities. The potential to accurately measure learning gains is also a diagnostic tool for institutional self-improvement. This essay discussed the marketisation of learning outcomes tests, and the relative merits of student experience surveys in gauging learning outcomes by analyzing results from the University of California’s Undergraduate Experience Survey (Student Experience in the Research University Survey: SERU-S). The SERU-S includes responses by seniors who entered as freshmen on six educational outcomes self-reports: analytical and critical thinking skills, writing skills, reading and comprehension skills, oral presentation skills, quantitative skills, and skills in a particular field of study. Although self-reported gains are sometimes regarded as having dubious validity compared to so-called “direct measures” of student learning, the analysis of this study reveals the SERU survey design has many advantages, especially in large, complex institutional settings. Without excluding other forms of gauging learning outcomes, we conclude that, designed properly, student surveys offer a valuable and more nuanced alternative in understanding and identifying learning outcomes in the broad tapestry of higher education institutions. We discuss the politics of the learning outcomes race, the validity of standardized tests like the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), and what we can learn from student surveys like SERU-S. We also suggest there is a tension between what meets the accountability desires of governments and the needs of individual universities focused on self-improvement.

The search for the Holy Grail to measure learning gains started in the US, but the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) wants to take it global. Here we tell a bit of this story and raise serious questions regarding the validity of the Collegiate Learning Assessment test and suggest there are alternatives. The merit of the CLA as a true assessment of learning outcomes is, we dare say, debatable. In part, the arrival and success of the CLA is a story of markets. In essence, it is a successfully marketed product that is fulfilling a growing demand with few recognized competitors. As a result, the CLA is winning the “learning outcomes race,” essentially becoming the “gold standard” in the US. We worry that the CLA’s early market success is potentially thwarting the development of other valuable and more nuanced alternatives – whether it be other types of standardized tests that attest to measuring the learning curve of students, or other approaches such as student portfolios, contextually designed surveys on the student experience, and alumni feedback. In a new study published in the journal Higher Education, we examine the relative merits of student experience surveys in gauging learning outcomes by analyzing results from the data from the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Survey. This essay discusses some of the main points from that article. There are real problems with student self-assessments. But as we argue here, universities can probably learn more about learning outcomes in a wide range of disciplines via properly designed census surveys than by standardized tests like the CLA. At present, we suggest there is tension between the accountability desires of governments and the needs of individual universities who must focus on institutional self-improvement. One might hope that they would be synonymous. But how to make ministries and other policymakers more fully understand the perils of a silver bullet test tool?