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Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela's Misión Robinson Literacy Campaign
Abstract
We evaluate the success of the Venezuelan government's latest nationwide literacy program, Misión Robinson, using official Venezuelan government survey data. Controlling for existing trends in literacy rates by age groups over the period 1975-2005, we find at most a small positive effect of Misión Robinson on literacy rates, and in many specifications the program's impact is statistically indistinguishable from zero. This main result is robust to time series analysis by birth cohort and to state-level difference-in-differences estimation. The results appear to be inconsistent with recent official claims of the complete eradication of illiteracy in Venezuela, but they resonate with existing research on other adult literacy programs, which have usually been expensive failures. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
... The results reported in Deshpande et al. (2017) are in line with the literature. Blunch (2017) summarizes the evidence we have on adult literacy programs (see also Abadzi (1994Abadzi ( , 2003aAbadzi ( , 2013, Blunch (2006), Blunch and Pörtner (2011), Ortega and Rodríguez (2008)). ...
... Following the Second World War, UNESCO began to emphasize adult literacy as an important educational goal. However, adult literacy programs are often characterized by low enrollment, high dropout rates, and rapid skills depreciation (Romain and Armstrong (1987); Abadzi (1994Abadzi ( , 2003b; Oxenham et al. (2002); Ortega and Rodríguez (2008)). These disappointing outcomes were due to several factors including unavailability of teaching material in the local language, poorly trained teachers, poor teaching program implementation, no planned practice of new acquired reading skills and no incentive to use these skills outside the immediate teaching environment. ...
... Adult literacy programs aim to improve the skills, and hence the earning potential and other socioeconomic outcomes, of illiterate adults. However, traditional adult literacy programs, typically operated by governments, have been largely ineffective due to low enrollment, high dropout rates, and rapid skill depreciation (Abadzi, 1994(Abadzi, , 2003Ortega & Rodríguez, 2008;Oxenham, 2002). Recent advances in adult literacy programs have sought to integrate modern information and communication technology (ICT) into effective teaching methods (for an insightful overview, see, Wagner & Kozma, 2005). ...
... Impact assessments of adult literacy programs can be grouped into two kinds: one set that measures the direct effects, namely, the acquisition of literacy or numeracy, and the other that measures the indirect or extended effects, such as intrahousehold sharing or child health outcomes. The set that measures the direct or immediate impacts of adult literacy programs, namely, acquisition of literacy and/or numeracy, primarily consists of studies that suffer from some or all of the following problems: very small sample sizes, flawed experimental design (e.g., lack of a comparison group), and poorly designed assessment tools (Carron, 1990;Ortega & Rodríguez, 2008). An exception is Banerji, Berry, and Shotland (2017) who provide a rigorous evaluation of literacy classes on language and math scores in the states of Bihar and Rajasthan in India. ...
With over 700 million illiterate adults worldwide, governments in many developing countries have implemented adult literacy programs. Typically these programs have low rates of success partly because the quality of teaching is heterogeneous. Standardization of teaching provided by computer-aided instruction might be a solution. However, there is little rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of computer-based adult literacy programs in delivering high-quality literacy and numeracy in the developing world. To fill this void in the literature, we study the impact of a computer-based adult literacy program, Tara Akshar Plus, on the literacy and numeracy skills of previously illiterate adult women in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Through a randomized control trial, we measure learning outcomes with individual-level literacy and numeracy tests and find statistically significant positive impacts of this computer-aided program on literacy and numeracy outcomes of women who undergo the TARA Akshar Plus program—relative to the control group. The effects are statistically significant but small in magnitude for women who were entirely illiterate prior to the program. The learning impacts are substantially larger for learners who knew at least a handful of letters at the beginning of the program. We compare the improvement in learning to that of another adult literacy and numeracy program. We conclude that TARA Akshar Plus is the more effective of the two, but the literacy and numeracy level achieved are not large enough to make many entirely illiterate learners become functionally literate.
... Adult literacy programs aim to improve the skills, and hence the earning potential and other socioeconomic outcomes, of illiterate adults. However, traditional adult literacy programs, typically operated by governments, have been largely ineffective due to low enrollment, high dropout rates, and rapid skill depreciation (Abadzi, 1994(Abadzi, , 2003Oxenham, 2002; and Ortega & Rodríguez, 2008). Recent advances in adult literacy programs have sought to integrate modern information and communication technology (ICT) into effective teaching methods (for an insightful overview, see, Wagner & Kozma, 2005). ...
... Impact assessments of adult literacy programs can be grouped into two kinds: one set that measures the direct effects, namely, the acquisition of literacy or numeracy, and the other that measures the indirect or extended effects, such as intrahousehold sharing or child health outcomes. The set that measures the direct or immediate impacts of adult literacy programs, namely, acquisition of literacy and/or numeracy, primarily consists of studies that suffer from some or all of the following problems: very small sample sizes, flawed experimental design (e.g., lack of a comparison group), and poorly designed assessment tools (Carron, 1990;Ortega & Rodríguez, 2008). An exception is Banerji et al. (2015) who provide a rigorous evaluation of literacy classes on language and math scores in the states of Bihar and Rajasthan in India. ...
With over 700 million illiterate adults worldwide, governments in many developing countries have implemented adult literacy programs. Typically these program have low rates of success partly because the quality of teaching is heterogeneous. Standardization of teaching provided by computer-aided instruction might be a solution. However, there is little rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of computer-based adult literacy programs in delivering high-quality literacy and numeracy in the developing world. To fill this void in the literature, we study the impact of a computer-based adult literacy program, Tara Akshar Plus, on the literacy and numeracy skills of previously illiterate adult women in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Through a randomized control trial, we measure learning outcomes with individual-level literacy and numeracy tests and find statistically significant positive impacts of this computer-aided program on literacy and numeracy outcomes of women who undergo the TARA Akshar Plus program – relative to the control group. The effects are statistically significant but small in magnitude for women who were entirely illiterate prior to the program. The learning impacts are substantially larger for learners who knew at least a handful of letters at the beginning of the program. We compare the improvement in learning to that of another adult literacy and numeracy program. We conclude that TARA Akshar Plus is the more effective of the two, but the literacy and numeracy level achieved are not large enough to make many entirely illiterate learners become functionally literate.
... In Rosnick and Weisbrot (2008) -henceforth RW -argue that our results in Ortega and Rodríguez (2008) – henceforth OR -where we found no consistent statistically significant effect of the Venezuelan literacy program on literacy outcomes, are sensitive to specification and rely on data that cannot adequately capture the effects of a large scale literacy program. In this short note we will show that RW's criticism is unfounded, and that the results of their analysis are inconsistent with the Venezuelan government's claim of illiteracy eradication. ...
... We will call this the no program hypothesis. In Ortega and Rodríguez (2008), we present a battery of tests of the Robinson program, using time-series, cohort, and state-level data derived from the Households Survey. A large number of our coefficients are statistically insignificant – though some of them are significant and positive, such as our lagged coefficients on the oldest age cohorts reported in ourTable 4. Based on that analysis, we conclude that " we find at most a small positive effect of Robinson on literacy rates, and in many specifications the program impact is statistically indistinguishable from zero…The results appear to be inconsistent with recent official claims of the complete eradication of illiteracy in Venezuela. ...
... Program villages were randomly selected from among a group of 105 eligible villages, allowing differences in educational outcomes between the program and comparison villages to be attributed to the mobile phone-based literacy curriculum. While some studies exist on the impact of adult literacy programs on both educational and economic outcomes (Blunch and Pörtner, 2009, Carron, 1990, Ortega and Rodríguez, 2008, many studies often suffer from serious methodological problems, such as small sample sizes, failure to account for selection bias, participant attrition and self-reported literacy scores. By contrast, the randomized nature of the intervention allows us to assess the causal relationship between the mobile phone curriculum and educational outcomes. ...
... We therefore follow the approach outlined in Ortega and Rodriguez (2008) and define "benefits" as the number of students who attained a certain level of literacy or numeracy on the test (in this case, Level 1). 22 We then compare ABC and non-ABC centers to isolate the additional costs and benefits associated with introducing mobile phones into adult literacy training, implicitly netting out broader livelihood gains from increased literacy. Figure 5 shows the cost per student attaining Level 1 proficiency during the first year of the program for ABC and non-ABC villages. ...
We report the short-term results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone literacy and numeracy program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult literacy students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class. Students in ABC villages showed substantial gains in numeracy exam scores. There is also evidence of heterogeneity in program effects across regions, suggesting the impact is context dependent. These results were stronger in one region, for women and for participants younger than 45. There was also evidence of persistent impacts: six months after the end of the first year of classes, students in ABC villages retained what they had learned better than the non-ABC students. These effects do not appear to be driven by differences in teacher quality and motivation, nor student attendance.
... Chávez created two off-budget funds-the National Development Fund and the Chinese Fund-that were under discretionary control of the executive. Contrary to the government's claims, social spending (as a share of fiscal spending) did not systematically increase, the much-touted social programs or missions failed to deliver consistent results (Rodríguez, 2008;Ortega and Rodríguez, 2008), and the subsidized official exchange rate did at least as much to line the pockets of elites as it did to lower prices for poor consumers (Gulotty and Kronick, 2022). Nor did Chávez deliver on his campaign promise of improving citizen security (Kronick, 2020b). ...
Venezuela has suffered three economic catastrophes since independence: one each in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Prominent explanations for this trilogy point to the interaction of class conflict and resource dependence. We turn attention to intra-class conflict, arguing that the most destructive policy choices stemmed not from the rich defending themselves against the masses but rather from pitched battles among elites. Others posit that Venezuelan political institutions failed to sustain growth because they were insufficiently inclusive; we suggest in addition that they inadequately mediated intra-elite conflict.
... 26 Restricting the sample to Ghanaians who never attended the formal education system reveals that this group did in fact respond differently than Ghanaians overall-namely by attending adult literacy programs in greater numbers than both previous but especially subsequent cohorts ( Figure 2). Indeed, while the experience for Ghanaians overall was one of an almost consistently decreasing trend in adult literacy program participation across cohorts (Figure 1), Ghanaians from the pre-Crisis and Crisis cohorts who never attended the formal education system as children participated in adult literacy programs in far greater numbers and at a far more steady level across cohorts than were the case for Ghanaians overall-even with an increase in the participation rates among the Crisis cohort, increasing from 12.8 percent 25 Though in practice adult literacy program participation frequently does not lead to literacy or numeracy proficiency both in Ghana (Blunch, 2006(Blunch, , 2008Blunch and Pörtner, 2011) and elsewhere (Abadzi, 1994;Ortega and Rodríguez, 2008). 26 Anecdotal evidence for this observed during travels in rural Ghana (Blunch) include female participants getting together-outside of the actual program-to build an oven for baking bread and subsequently selling it in the market. ...
This paper employs a unique firm-level data covering for firms in the private sector in Egypt, to analyze whether firms' perception of political instability has an adverse effect on firm performance. The analysis covers 2,897 firms over the period 2009-2012. There are two main results: First, using OLS, we find a negative association between political instability and the growth of firms' sales and employment. Second, using an endogenous treatment linear regression models, to correct for potential endogeneity, we find that political instability can even have a negative causal effect on firms' performance. The results are robust to different specifications.
... persons how to read and write in a span of a couple of years. However, employing INE household survey data, Ortega and Rodríguez (2008) found that Misión Robinson contributed at most to a moderate reduction in the illiteracy rate, while -in some of their specifications -changes in the illiteracy rate were completely explained by economic and demographic trends. Furthermore, they also estimated that there were still around one million persons illiterate after the government had proclaimed the country freed from illiteracy. ...
... Polít. Int.,60(1): e017, 2017 Kleinschmidt and Gallego Pérez 3 or to those of other countries (Ortega and Rodríguez 2008). Proponents of counter-hegemonic integration criticize that ALBA has not evolved beyond an initiative of the Venezuelan government with few multilateral elements whatsoever (Lo Brutto and Vázquez Salazar 2015, 69). ...
In this article, we argue that conventional understandings of regional integration based on neo-functionalism, hitherto often used to describe the diverse projects of Latin American regionalism, are of limited utility in that context. Rather than representing processes of economic or political unification, the various regionalisms could be understood more productively as a reaction to the crisis in legitimacy that social orders in the region have experienced under the conditions of globalized modernity. We then deploy an understanding of regionalism derived from sociological differentiation theory in order to advance this argument.
... On the other hand, previous research has found that adult literacy programmes have not been all that successful in creating literacy (and numeracy) skillsthough this is their stated objectiveamong participants Ortega & Rodríguez, 2008), which also seems to be one of the main reasons why adult literacy programmes appears to have been abandoned to a large extent in recent years across the developing world, including by major players such as the World Bank (Chowdhury, 1995). Yet, the results here indicate that adult literacy programmes may still have something to contribute in terms of improving livelihoods among participants. ...
I examine teenage pregnancy in Ghana, focusing on the role and interplay of Ghanaian and English reading skills, formal educational attainment, and adult literacy programme participation. Pursuing several alternative identification strategies three main results are established. First, I confirm the finding from previous studies that educational attainment is negatively related to teenage pregnancy. Second, however, once Ghanaian and English reading skills are introduced, the association between educational attainment and teenage pregnancy decreases or disappears altogether. Third, for the girls who have not completed primary school, adult literacy programme participation is associated with a much lower probability of experiencing a teenage pregnancy.
A bright future is the best contraceptive.
–Marian Wright Edelman
... The main conclusion, then, is not that there are no changes in literacy at adult ages in general, although it is disheartening that true gains appear to be so hard to find, confirming findings from the program evaluation literature (Abadzi, 2004;Blunch & Pö rtner, 2011;Ortega & Rodriguez, 2008). The analysis shows that substantial changes in cohort literacy can indeed be observed in some cases, changes that are extremely difficult or even impossible to explain as an outcome of selective attrition. ...
There is a potential disconnect between adult literacy initiatives on the one hand and the indicators typically employed to operationalize their targets and measure their progress on the other. Specifically, the policy discourse is typically framed in terms of illiterate adults becoming literate, while changes in the main indicator, the overall adult literacy rate, may instead be driven by literate youth becoming adults. The aim of this study is to quantify the relative contribution of these two factors (adult literacy acquisition and cohort replacement) in order to understand the extent to which the latter needs to be taken into account in assessing the progress achieved toward the Education for All (EFA) literacy target. Using DHS data on the education and measured (rather than self-reported) literacy status of women aged 20–49 for 30 countries to examine changes in literacy along cohort lines (while bounding the possible distortion due to migration and differential mortality), I demonstrate how much of the increase in the overall adult literacy rate is due to literate youth becoming adults, rather than illiterate adults becoming literate. The results show that in most countries, observed gains in overall adult literacy greatly overstate the degree to which adults have gained literacy at adult ages. Some countries do exhibit changes in literacy along cohort lines that cannot be easily attributed to selective migration or mortality and may indicate ‘true” gains or losses in individual literacy. The finding that the cohort effect is of large magnitude in practice has significant implications for research on and design of literacy policies: relying on an indicator that conflates two distinct goals, namely of increasing the share of literate adults and of helping illiterate adults become literate, results in misleading policy conclusions. This affects both the retrospective assessment of policy success and failure (and its causes), and the prospective assessment of the challenges in meeting “one size fits all” literacy goals faced by countries with very different population dynamics. This insight is particularly timely given the opportunity presented by the beginning of the new Sustainable Development agenda to reconsider the monitoring of improvements in adult literacy around the globe.
... Venezuela (Corrales and Penfold-Becerra, 2007;Penfold-Becerra, 2007), or have offered critiques of their performance (Ortega and Rodríguez, 2008;Rodríguez, 2007). Our analysis touches these issues tangentially, since our primary purpose is to understand the allocation of different types of goods across localities. ...
We consider the behavior of an incumbent that can deploy local public goods and private goods to buy votes, and is unable to verify vote choice but capable of monitoring voter turnout, a common scenario in secret-ballot polities. As advanced by recent literature, the ability to monitor turnout rather than vote choice implies that politicians should use targetable private goods to mobilize voters. However, politicians also deploy non-excludable local public goods, which have low mobilization potential because of free-rider incentives. We argue that vote-buying politicians reserve local public goods for loyal constituencies (where they enjoy support from most voters that bother to turn out) and provide private goods in other constituencies where they gain from motivating less committed supporters to turn out. We test aggregate-level implications of our theory on Venezuela’s social programs.
... The Venezuelan campaign specifically focused on adults with disability, and particularly on adults who were visually impaired. Nevertheless, research on the effectiveness of the Venezuelan campaign in reaching its target populations has been inconclusive (Ortega and Rodríguez 2008). ...
In this article, we locate the Kha Ri Gude South African Mass Literacy Campaign within the context of the problem of illiteracy and exclusion in South Africa, while concentrating on various post-apartheid initiatives designed to give visually challenged adults the opportunity to become literate. We shall provide a detailed account of focus group sessions organised in 2012; the aim of these sessions was to explore the experiences of blind literacy practitioners who were charged with the supervision and coordination of Braille literacy classes for blind, illiterate adults. We suggest that the way the practitioners expressed what being involved in the Campaign meant for them for an extended period (three years or more) gives us a glimpse of how, through their roles as literacy organisers, they were able to engender agency among blind adult literacy learners and themselves.
... Venezuela (Corrales and Penfold-Becerra, 2007;Penfold-Becerra, 2007), or have offered critiques of their performance (Ortega and Rodríguez, 2008;Rodríguez, 2007). Our analysis touches these issues tangentially, since our primary purpose is to understand the allocation of different types of goods across localities. ...
We consider the strategic behavior of a clientelist politician that can deploy non- targetable local public goods or targetable private goods across localities and is un- able to verify vote choice but capable of monitoring voter turnout. As anticipated by Nichter (2008), the ability to monitor turnout rather than vote choice implies that clien- telist politicians should use targetable private goods to mobilize ideologically-committed voters. Local public goods however lack mobilizing potential, so their deployment must obey some alternative logic. We argue that when clientelist parties monitor turnout rather than vote choice they reserve local public goods for the most loyal constituencies|where in principle they command a majority of those that bother to turn out|and provide private goods in constituencies where their supporters might be a minority, but where they can still secure victories by turning out loyal voters. We explore aggregate-level implications of our theory by analyzing social programs in Venezuela, a hyper-presidential system where spending patterns can be directly attributed to the incumbent administration.
... The growing emphasis on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the objective of achieving education for all, has called attention to the issue of literacy in the recent past. Among the studies undertaken on literacy are those by Sundaram and Vanneman (2008) -literacy and gender, Cascio, Clark and Gordon (2008) -literacy and assessment, Ortega and Rodriguez (2008) -literacy and government policy in Venezuela, Maddox (2008) -literacy and human development, Finnie and Meng (2005) -literacy and labour market outcomes. ...
Examining the reason for differences in adult literacy rates across countries, this study finds that colonialism exerts a long term negative economic impact on literacy rates of the colonised. Investigating in particular, the effects of the French and British colonisation policies, the results of this study indicate that the colonial legacy remained long after independence, slowing down improvements in literacy rates in the former colonies. In conclusion it is noted that the implementation of policies that will ensure equal access to education for all is important.
... The latter is important since there is often a perception that self - reporting of literacy will lead to too high literacy rates . Ortega and Rodriguez ( 2008 ) , for example , argue that semiliterate persons might claim that they are literate after participation in a " Misión Robinson " course . It is , however , also possible that participation in an adult literacy program will lead to participants learning that they really cannot read . ...
This paper examines the effect of adult literacy program participation on household consumption in Ghana. The adult literacy programs in Ghana are of special interest because they are more comprehensive than standard literacy programs and incorporate many additional topics. We use community fixed effects combined with instrumental variables to account for possible endogenous program placement and self-selection into program participation. For households where none of the adults have completed any formal education we find a substantial, positive, and statistically significant effect on household consumption. Our preferred estimate of the effect of participation for households without education is equivalent to a 10% increase in consumption per adult equivalent. The effects of participation on welfare for other households are smaller, not statistically significant, and become smaller the more educated the household is. We find positive and statistically significant effects of participation on literacy and numeracy rates, although the increases are too small to be the only explanation for the welfare effects. There is also evidence that participants are more likely to engage in market activities and to sell a variety of agricultural goods. Taking account of both direct cost and opportunity cost, we argue that the social returns of adult literacy programs are substantial.
... All of these efforts have begun to attract significant scholarly attention . Increasing numbers of studies examine the performance of the Bolivarian participatory initiatives and the more popular missions (Ellner and Hellinger 2003; Corrales and Penfold 2007; Rodríguez 2007; Hsieh et al. 2007; Penfold-Becerra 2007; Ortega and Rodríguez 2008; Smilde and Hellinger forthcoming). However, much of what characterizes the broader literature on participatory democracy also describes the studies of Chavismo. ...
This article assesses popular mobilization under the Chávez government's participatory initiatives in Venezuela using data from the AmericasBarometer survey of 2007. This is the first study of the so-called Bolivarian initiatives using nationally representative, individual-level data. The results provide a mixed assessment. Most of the government's programs invite participation from less active segments of society, such as women, the poor, and the less educated, and participation in some programs is quite high. However, much of this participation clusters within a narrow group of activists, and a disproportionate number of participants are Chávez supporters. This partisan bias probably reflects self-screening by Venezuelans who accept Chávez's radical populist discourse and leftist ideology, rather than vote buying or other forms of open conditionality. Thus, the Venezuelan case suggests some optimism for proponents of participatory democracy, but also the need to be more attuned to its practical political limits.
Venezuela has suffered three economic catastrophes since independence: one each in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Prominent explanations for this trilogy point to the interaction of class conflict and resource dependence. We turn attention to intra-class conflict, arguing that the most destructive policy choices stemmed not from the rich defending themselves against the masses but rather from pitched battles among elites. Others posit that Venezuelan political institutions failed to sustain growth because they were insufficiently inclusive; we suggest in addition that they inadequately mediated intra-elite conflict.
Using a cohort approach, this paper examines educational attainment in Ghana and its potential determinants considering both educational attainment in the formal education system and participation in non-formal education in the form of adult literacy programs. The results indicate an overall substitution between formal and non-formal education across the generations, with participation in adult literacy programs decreasing as the formal education system expanded its coverage across space and time in Ghana. Individuals who completed any formal education were also much less likely to participate in adult literacy programs, by about 10 percentage-points per year of formal education completed. Additionally, the generations subject to the declining education system during the 1970s were substantially disadvantaged, with the cohort that was roughly of primary school age at the time of the economic breakdown in 1983 and the first few years thereafter being the last of the disadvantaged cohorts—the “lost generations.” This is especially true for the particularly vulnerable group of individuals who never received any formal education, where the crisis cohort peaked in terms of adult literacy program participation relative to later (and earlier) cohorts, possibly in response to a decrease in the quality of the formal education system as well as increased competition from returning refugees. We perform a simple test for the declining quality of the formal education system in the 1970s and find evidence consistent with a decrease in the quality in the education system during the 1970s, followed by an increase in quality thereafter.
National Oil Companies (NOCs) play an important role in the world economy. They produce most of the world's oil and bankroll governments across the globe. Although NOCs superficially resemble private-sector companies, they often behave in very different ways. Oil and Governance explains the variation in performance and strategy for NOCs and provides fresh insights into the future of the oil industry as well as the politics of the oil-rich countries where NOCs dominate. It comprises fifteen case studies, each following a common research design, of NOCs based in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The book also includes cross-cutting pieces on the industrial structure of the oil industry and the politics and administration of NOCs. This book is the largest and most systematic analysis of NOCs to date and is suitable for audiences from industry and academia, as well as policy makers.
The religion of Maria Lionza in Venezuela includes many healing and possession rituals, where alcohol consumption is frequent. This has contributed to the perception that this religion is uniquely associated with alcoholism and criminality. Those perceptions may be negative stereotypes that are rooted in race and class biases. This study tests the hypothesis that the religion of Maria Lionza is associated with greater alcohol consumption, in a study with 71 participants. The results suggest that marialionceros are at greater risk of developing Alcohol Use Disorders than a control group. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between alcohol consumption and religiosity as a whole, although there is a weak correlation between organisational religious activity and alcohol consumption. A strong negative correlation was found between educational level and alcohol consumption.
In this study we evaluate the impact of a literacy program for internally displaced female refugees in Afghanistan. The results of the evaluation show that the program was beneficial both for the women who received it and for their children, as participants were 50% points more likely to be able to read and write and 19% points more likely to work. The program also had positive effects on their children who were 2.6% points more likely to be enrolled in secondary school. Overall, the evaluation results suggest that adult literacy programs may mitigate intergenerational poverty traps.
Foundational theories of trade politics emphasize a conflict between consumer welfare and protectionist lobbies. But these theories ignore other powerful lobbies that also shape trade policy. We propose a theory of trade distortion arising from conflict between consumer welfare and importer lobbies. We estimate the key parameter of the model—the government's weight on welfare—using original data from Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez used an exchange-rate subsidy to underwrite hundreds of billions of dollars of imports. Whereas estimates from traditional models would make Chávez look like a welfare maximizer, our results indicate that he implemented distortionary commercial policy to the benefit of special interests. Our analysis underscores the importance of tailoring workhorse models to account for differences in interest group configuration. The politics of trade policy is not reducible to the politics of protectionism.
1917 yılında gerçekleşen Ekim Devrimi’nden sonra Rusya’da iktidar, Vladimir Lenin liderliğindeki Bolşeviklerin eline geçmektedir. Ekim Devrimi’nden iki yıl sonra 26 Aralık 1919 tarihinde Lenin’in yönetiminde “Nüfus Arasında Cehaletin Ortadan Kaldırılması” (ликвида́ция безгра́мотности у населения) başlığında, Likbez (Ликбез) kısa adıyla Rusya’da okuryazarlık kampanyası başlatılmakta ve kampanyayla birlikte ülkede eğitim düzeyinin yükseltilmesine yönelik yoğun bir çaba sarf edilmektedir. Özellikle kampanya kapsamında kitap okumasının teşvik edilmesine ve kitlelerin okuma alışkanlığının gelişmesine yönelik propaganda faaliyetleri gerçekleştirilmektedir. Bu aşamada dönemin önde gelen kitle iletişim araçlarından biri olan propaganda posterlerinden yararlanılmaktadır. Çalışmada Lenin döneminde başlatılan Likbez’de kitlelerin kitap okumasının teşvik edilmesi sürecinde propaganda posterlerinden ne şekilde yaralanıldığının ve hangi mesajların verildiğinin ortaya konulması amaçlanmaktadır. Bu amaçla çalışmada kota örneklemi kullanılarak belirlenen 9 propaganda posteri, Rus dilbilimci Roman Jakobson’un göstergebilim kavramları ışığında analiz edilmektedir. Çalışmada elde edilen bulgularda kitap okuyan insanların mutlu ve huzurlu bir yaşama sahip olacağına yönelik algıların oluşturulmaya çalışıldığı, diğer yandan kitap okumanın Komünizm ideolojisiyle yakınlaşmanın bir yolu olarak sunulduğu ortaya çıkarılmaktadır.
Abstract
The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. A literacy campaign was launched in Russia under the title of "Elimination of Ignorance Among the Population" (ликвида́ция безгра́мотности у населения), with the short name Likbez (Ликбез) and an intense effort was made to raise the level of education with the campaign in the country under the leadership of Lenin on December 26, 1919. Especially within the scope of the campaign, propaganda activities were carried out to encourage reading books and to develop the reading habits of the masses. At this stage, propaganda posters, one of the leading mass media tools of the period, were used. In the study, it was aimed to reveal how the propaganda posters were used and what messages were given in the process of encouraging the masses to read books in Likbez, which was initiated in Lenin’s reign. For this purpose, 9 propaganda posters determined were analyzed in the light of the semiotics concepts of the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson. In the findings of the study, it was revealed that the perceptions that people who read books would have a happy and peaceful life were tried to be formed, on the other hand, reading was presented as a way of getting closer to the Communism ideology.
As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions by arguing that these leaders had no choice but to rule with an iron fist in the face of Western imperialism. Focusing on Chavismo, this paper analyzes the steps towards Venezuela’s democratic breakdown taken by both Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, the nonagentic anti-imperialist rhetoric that deflected the true intent behind these steps, and how those steps led the country to the manufactured disaster it finds itself in today. It concludes by positing that the legitimacy of supposedly anti-imperialist policies hinges not on the fierce rhetoric surrounding them but rather on the lived ends of the people affected by them.
Teacher absenteeism is an important obstacle to sustained learning gains in many developing countries. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, which included an additional intervention designed to improve teacher accountability and students’ learning. Villages were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first was a two-year adult education program, with normal visits by non-governmental organization (NGO) and Ministry staff. The second included the same curriculum and visits as the first, but villages also received a mobile intervention: weekly phone calls to the teacher, village chief and two randomly selected students. The third was a pure control group, with no adult education program or calls. We find that both interventions improved students’ learning outcomes: across both years of the program, students in the standard adult education program increased their math and reading test scores by 0.19–0.22 s.d, respectively. The mobile phone intervention led to an additional increase in math and reading test scores of 0.12 and 0.15 s.d., with stronger effects amongst called students. We also address alternative threats to identification, namely, differential attrition and baseline imbalance, and find that the math results are robust across these different specifications. This suggests that using mobile phone technology as a means to communicate with teachers and students can improve learning outcomes, beyond its use as a pedagogical tool within the classroom.
Cambridge Core - Latin American Government, Politics and Policy - When Democracies Deliver - by Katherine Bersch
Why do governance reforms in developing democracies so often fail, and when might they succeed? When Democracies Deliver offers a dynamic framework for assessing the effectiveness and durability of policy change. Drawing on detailed analyses of public sector reforms in Brazil and Argentina, this book challenges conventional wisdom to reveal that incremental changes sequenced over time prove more effective in promoting accountability, increasing transparency, and strengthening institutions than comprehensive overhauls pushed through by political will. Developing an innovative theory that integrates cognitive-psychological insights about decision making with research on institutional change, Katherine Bersch shows how political and organizational factors can shape reform strategies and information processing. Through extensive interviews and field research, Bersch traces how two competing strategies have determined the different trajectories of institutions responsible for government contracting in health care and transportation. When Democracies Deliver offers a fresh insight on the perils of powering and the benefits of gradual reform.
Using a randomized field experiment in India, we evaluate the effectiveness of adult literacy and parental involvement interventions in improving children's learning. Households were assigned to receive either adult literacy (language and math) classes for mothers, training for mothers on how to enhance their children's learning at home, or a combination of the two programs. All three interventions had significant but modest impacts on childrens math scores. The interventions also increased mothers' test scores in both language and math, as well as a range of other outcomes reflecting greater involvement of mothers in their children's education. (JEL I21, J13, J16, O15)
Many insurgent groups operate across international borders, but transnational insurgent activities are seldom observable and little is known about their consequences. In this paper I show that activity by Colombian insurgent group FARC increased disproportionately in Colombian municipalities next to the border with Venezuela after Hugo Chávez became president of the latter. I argue that FARC's reliance on short-range weaponry and non-mechanized transportation limited the area in which the group could expand its operations as a result of access to a cross-border safe haven. In consequence, the finding above constitutes evidence of increased FARC presence in Venezuela during the Chávez administration. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change of government in Venezuela, I find that Colombian municipalities more exposed to a cross-border guerrilla sanctuary experience large increases in the intensity of violence, as well as reductions in local tax revenue and educational enrolment.
Education policy can have a profound impact on political stability, revolution, and violent change, and thus plays an important role in creating or preventing conflict (Roberts-Schweitzer, Greaney, and Duer 2006, 2). Education can facilitate violent conflict by reinforcing confrontational political ideologies or training those who will become fighters (Leach and Dunne 2007, 23); likewise, the failure of an education system to provide a comprehensive education for students and support for educators can create fertile ground for protests and riots (Spencer and United States National Student Association 1965, 57). Alternatively, education can be used as a powerful tool for ameliorating hostility and restoring peace (Davies 2004, 8). The creation of new education policies can serve as a uniting force that works to heal tensions and rebuild nations after conflicts (Tawil and Harley 2004, 7). While instances of education instigating and curtailing conflict have been documented in numerous circumstances, the specific ways in which education policies create conflict or foster peace are not well understood. Research identifying education strategies that have ignited or extinguished political tensions and national conflicts is particularly limited. This chapter seeks to remedy this shortcoming by identifying specific education-policy strategies and policy contexts that either led to conflict or helped to prevent and end conflict.
Can Latin America's “new left“ stimulate economic development, enhance social equity, and deepen democracy in spite of the economic and political constraints it faces? This is the first book to systematically examine the policies and performance of the left-wing governments that have risen to power in Latin America during the last decade. Featuring thorough studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela by renowned experts, the volume argues that moderate leftist governments have attained greater, more sustainable success than their more radical, contestatory counterparts. Moderate governments in Brazil and Chile have generated solid economic growth, reduced poverty and inequality, and created innovative and fiscally sound social programs, while respecting the fundamental principles of market economics and liberal democracy. By contrast, more radical governments, exemplified by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, have expanded state intervention and popular participation and attained some short-term economic and social successes, but they have provoked severe conflict, undermined democracy, and failed to ensure the economic and institutional sustainability of their policy projects.
Populism is best understood as a Manichaean worldview linked to a characteristic language or discourse. Chavismo, the movement that sustains Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, is a paradigmatic instance of populism. Using a novel, cross-country dataset on populist discourse, combined with extensive data from within Venezuela and across other countries, this book demonstrates that populist movements can be understood as responses to widespread corruption and economic crisis. The book analyzes the Bolivarian Circles and government missions in Venezuela, revealing how populist ideas influence political organization and policy. The analysis provides important insight into the nature of populism, including its causes and consequences, and addresses broader questions about the role of ideas in politics.
National Oil Companies (NOCs) play an important role in the world economy. They produce most of the world’s oil and bankroll governments across the globe. Although NOCs superficially resemble private-sector companies, they often behave in very different ways. Oil and Governance explains the variation in performance and strategy for NOCs and provides fresh insights into the future of the oil industry as well as the politics of the oil-rich countries where NOCs dominate. It comprises fifteen case studies, each following a common research design, of NOCs based in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The book also includes cross-cutting pieces on the industrial structure of the oil industry and the politics and administration of NOCs. This book is the largest and most systematic analysis of NOCs to date and is suitable for audiences from industry and academia, as well as policy makers.
The returns to educational investments hinge on whether such investments can improve the quality and persistence of educational gains. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, in which some students learned how to use simple mobile phones (Project ABC). Students in ABC villages achieved test scores that were 0.19-0.26 standard deviations higher than those in standard adult education classes, and standardized math test scores remained higher seven months after the end of classes. These results suggest that simple information technology can be harnessed to improve educational outcomes among rural populations. (JEL D83, I21, O15, O33)
In an age of …nancial globalization, are markets and democracy compatible? For some globalization scholars, deepening economic integration represents a setback for democracy. In the race for international capital, governments pursue policies that favor international economic stability over domestic social stability. By contrast, other scholars argue that markets create wealth which helps stabilize democracies. In this paper, I seek to reconcile these di¤erences by o¤ering a new insight that goes beyond the classic globalization debate. I argue that what reduces policy autonomy is not the amount of …nancial integration, but rather the structure of lending to developing countries. When foreign debt is comprised mostly of international bank loans, creditors cannot muster a credible exit threat, allowing governments to prioritize economic growth and jobs. By contrast, when global bonds account for the majority of a government's external debt, creditors'ownership dispersion creates a more credible exit threat, allowing markets to more crudely impose austerity demands. In developing countries, where political priorities can literally change overnight, capital has proven to be most ighty during election years. In response to these market pressures, politicians have changed the traditional political logic. In contrast to the economic boom-bust cycles predicted by political business cycle theory, I argue that elections are more likely to be deationary. In my large-N statistical test of 16 Latin American countries (observed between 1961 and 2009), I …nd that as global bonds comprise a higher share of national debt, politicians become more likely to pursue a political austerity cycle characterized by low ination and low growth.
There is anecdotal evidence that the standard of living for the educated has fallen in Venezuela over the last few years. This evidence comes as a surprise because after experiencing an economic downturn in 2002 and 2003, Venezuela's economy has boomed (gross domestic product growth has hovered between 8 and 18%) in large part due to the increase in the price of petroleum. In this paper, we provide evidence that returns to education have decreased significantly in Venezuela from 2002 to 2008. More importantly, we focus on what has led to the decrease in returns. We explore a fall in quality and a supply-demand argument for this decline. Mission Sucre was enacted in September 2003 by President Hugo Chavez to provide free mass tertiary education, in particular targeting the poor and marginalized. The implementation of this program created a sudden increase in the supply of skilled labor and had a direct impact on quality of education. Although we do not claim that 100% of the decline between 2002 and 2008 can be linked to this program, we provide ample evidence that a good part of the falling returns can be linked to Mission Sucre. Specifically, we show that for a 1% increase in the share of Mission Sucre students in the state, returns to university level of education declined by about 5.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2008.
This paper estimates the causal effect of maternal participation in adult literacy programs on child mortality in rural Ghana, taking into account the possible endogeneity of program participation and endogenous program placement. Adult literacy program participation has a substantial impact on child mortality and is also cost-effective in reducing child mortality. The combined results of this paper point toward the potentially important role of adult literacy programs in promoting child health in Ghana through the acquisition of health knowledge by participants—in stark contrast with the decreased attention toward such programs in the developing world in recent years.
In 2004, the Chávez regime in Venezuela distributed the list of several million voters whom had attempted to remove him from office throughout the government bureaucracy, allegedly to identify and punish these voters. We match the list of petition signers distributed by the government to household survey respondents to measure the economic effects of being identified as a Chavez political opponent. We find that voters who were identified as Chavez opponents experienced a 5 percent drop in earnings and a 1.5 percentage point drop in employment rates after the voter list was released. A back-of-the envelope calculation suggests that the loss aggregate TFP from the misallocation of workers across jobs was substantial, on the order of 3 percent of GDP.
Mark Weisbrot (2008) has claimed that under the Chávez administration in Venezuela the share of pro-poor spending has increased, inequality has declined, poverty has fallen rapidly, and there has been a massive reduction in illiteracy. All of these conclusions are based on the use of heavily slanted data and on the misinterpretation of the existing empirical evidence. Weisbrot uses estimates of social spending that are upward biased by the inclusion of large infrastructure projects, debt refinancing, and even military spending; his inequality data is distorted by the inexplicable exclusion of households that received no income; his econometric estimates on illiteracy actually show the exact opposite of what he is arguing for. Weisbrot confuses basic economic concepts and offers a bizarre interpretation of events leading up to the 2002 currency crisis. Once one corrects for Weibrot’s biases, the evidence paints a consistent image of an administration that has not effectively prioritized the well-being of the Venezuelan poor.
We examine some issues in the estimation of time-series cross-section models, calling into question the conclusions of many published studies, particularly in the field of comparative political economy. We show that the generalized least squares approach of Parks produces standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence, often underestimating variability by 50% or more. We also provide an alternative estimator of the standard errors that is correct when the error structures show complications found in this type of model. Monte Carlo analysis shows that these “panel-corrected standard errors” perform well. The utility of our approach is demonstrated via a reanalysis of one “social democratic corporatist” model.
This paper deals with the estimation of unequally spaced panel data regression models with AR(1) remainder disturbances. A feasible generalized least squares (GLS) procedure is proposed as a weighted least squares that can handle a wide range of unequally spaced panel data patterns. This procedure is simple to compute and provides natural estimates of the serial correlation and variance components parameters. The paper also provides a locally best invariant test for zero first-order serial correlation against positive or negative serial correlation in case of unequally spaced panel data.
This paper generalizes the Durbin-Watson type statistics to test the OLS residuals from the fixed effects model for serial
independence. Also generalized are the tests proposed by Sargan and Bhargava for the hypothesis that the residuals form a
random walk. A method for efficient estimation of the parameters is also developed. Finally, an earnings function is estimated
using the Michigan Survey of Income Dynamics in order to illustrate the uses of the tests and the estimation procedures developed
in this paper.