Beyond outbreak zones: how Ebola shaped governance and trust across Sierra Leone Open Access

Abstract

This paper examines how the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic affected political trust and governance perceptions in Sierra Leone, using a difference-in-differences design that compares citizens in chiefdoms with varying levels of Ebola exposure before and after the crisis. I test two competing theoretical mechanisms: a capacity hypothesis, which predicts that chiefdoms receiving greater emergency aid inflows would experience smaller trust declines, and an oversight hypothesis, which predicts that the crisis would produce a nationwide accountability shock independent of local exposure intensity. Drawing on Afrobarometer survey data from pre and post crisis periods, I find consistent support for the oversight hypothesis. The difference-in-differences estimator is statistically insignificant across all outcomes. These results suggest that the political consequences of the crisis were driven not by the geographic distribution of resources but by a nationwide disruption to the accountability structures through which citizens normally evaluate their government.

 

Table of Contents

 Table of contents

Introduction ............................................................. 1

Why Sierra Leone .................................................... 3

2.1 Government and Civil Society Aid in Sierra Leone .... 3

2.2 Governance Aid Redistribution ................................. 5

2.3 Health Aid Oversight .............................................. 5

2.4 National Aid Changes ............................................ 6

Literature Review .................................................... 7

Theory and Hypotheses ............................................ 9

4.1 Capacity mechanism ........................................... 10

4.2 Oversight mechanism ......................................... 10

4.3 Observable citizen-level implications ...................... 11

Research Methods ................................................. 11

5.1 Design ............................................................ 11

5.2 Empirical Specification ........................................ 12

5.3 Identifying Assumptions ...................................... 13

5.4 Independent Variables ........................................ 14

5.41 Foreign Aid Data ............................................. 14

5.42 Treatment Variable: Ebola Exposure ................. 15

5.5 Dependent Variables ......................................... 15

5.6 Survey respondent level analysis ......................... 16

Results ............................................................... 16

6.1 Chiefdom Comparison ....................................... 16

6.2 Local Leader Accountability Shifts ......................... 17

6.3 Main Results .................................................... 19

Competing Causal Mechanism ................................. 21

Discussion .......................................................... 23

8.1 The National Accountability Shock ......................... 23

8.2 Qualitative Look at Bypassing Local Institutions ..... 25

8.3 Urban Moderation of the Trust Decline ................. 26

Limitations .......................................................... 27

Importance of Health Aid in the Crisis ................. 28

Conclusion ........................................................ 29

Data Used .............................................................. 30

Works Cited .......................................................... 31

Appendix ............................................................... 36

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Political Science
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, General
Keyword	Ebola Foreign Aid Sierra Leone
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dr. Eric Reinhardt, Emory University
Committee Members	Dr. David Davis , Emory University Dr. Danielle Jung, Emory University

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