Syeda ShahBano Ijaz

Syeda ShahBano Ijaz specializes in the political economy of developing countries. Through her research, she develops a theory of access provision to foreign aid funded projects and its consequences for democratic accountability and representation. Specifically, she focuses on gaps in last-mile access to foreign aid funded social security programs in Pakistan. Using a mixed methods design, she probes the determinants of voters’ demand for access to foreign aid benefits and the incentives that drive politicians’ supply of access. Her dissertation, prospectively titled “From Aid to Accountability: Tracing Last-Mile Access in Developing Countries” uses a mixed-methods design to home in on the politics of last-mile access. It comprises three core quantitative chapters based on three survey experiments conducted with undergraduate voters and direct aid beneficiaries in Pakistan. To understand politicians’ electoral incentives, she relies on open-ended interviews fielded to local councilors and provincial assembly representatives. Finally, she integrate both dimensions in a large-n analysis on the effects of foreign aid on last-mile access and election outcomes by conducting a survey of aid beneficiaries.

Proposal Title:  From Aid to Accountability: Tracing Last-Mile Access in Developing Countries