
Lily L. Tsai
Director and Founder
email l_tsai@mit.edu
twitter @mitgovlab
Lily L. Tsai is the Director and Founder of the MIT Governance Lab (MIT GOV/LAB) and the Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as the current Chair of the MIT Faculty. Her research focuses on accountability, governance, and political participation in developing contexts, particularly in Asia and Africa. In 2014, she founded MIT GOV/LAB, a group of social and behavioral scientists and design researchers who develop and test innovations in citizen engagement and government responsiveness. By focusing on how and why citizens become active in engaging their governments, Tsai aims to bridge researcher and practitioner communities by developing learning collaborations that can respond to governance challenges using empirical evidence in real time. Tsai has written two books, When People Want Punishment: Retributive Justice and the Puzzle of Authoritarian Popularity, and Accountability Without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China, as well as articles in The American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Behavior, Comparative Politics, and World Development.
Selected publications:
- “What Makes Anticorruption Punishment Popular? Individual-level Evidence from China” (with Minh Trinh and Shiyao Liu). The Journal of Politics (2021). This article explores how punishment of corruption helps to build public support in authoritarian regimes through two mechanisms. First, through the ability to pursue anticorruption initiatives to the end signals government capacity, and deontologically, anticorruption punishment signals moral commitments.
- “Building Credibility and Cooperation in Low-Trust Settings: Persuasion and Source Accountability in Liberia during the 2014-2015 Ebola Crisis” (with Benjamin Morse and Robert Blair). Comparative Political Studies 53, 10-11, 1582-1618 (2020). This article explores how governments can overcome their credibility deficit when promoting public welfare in low-trust settings. To answer this question, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Liberian government’s door-to-door canvassing campaign during the 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic, which aimed to persuade residents to voluntarily comply with policies for containing the disease.
- “Public Health and Public Trust: Survey Evidence from the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Liberia” (with Robert A. Blair and Benjamin S. Morse). Social Science & Medicine 172 (2017): 89-97.This article analyzes a large representative survey during the Ebola crisis in Monrovia, Liberia to show that Liberians who distrusted government took fewer precautions against Ebola and were also less compliant with Ebola control policies.
- Patterns of demand for non-Ebola health services during and after the Ebola outbreak: Panel survey evidence from Monrovia, Liberia” (with Benjamin Morse, Karen Grépin, and Robert Blair). BMJ Global Health (2016): 1:e000007. The 2014-15 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak was unprecedented in magnitude, duration and geographic scope. This research uses data from a population-based panel survey conducted in the late-crisis period and two postcrisis periods to track trends in the prevalence of adult and child illness, subsequent usage of health services and the determinants thereof.
- “Constructive Noncompliance in Rural China” Comparative Politics 47, no. 3 (2015): 253-279.This article develops the concept of constructive noncompliance: noncompliance with state policies and regulations that is justified by citizens as a way of communicating constructive criticism about policy performance and factual information about local conditions to decision-makers. It aims to improve our understanding of how these behaviors relate to other forms of political action and when they should be interpreted as indicators of legitimacy and state capacity.
- “Outspoken Insiders: Political Connections and Citizen Participation in Authoritarian China” (with Yiqing Xu). Political Behavior 40, no. 3 (2017): 629-657.This article, using data from both urban and rural China, finds that individuals with political connections are more likely to contact authorities with complaints about government public services, despite the fact that they do not have higher levels of dissatisfaction with public service provision.
- “Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship? Evidence from an Education Intervention in Rural Kenya” (with Evan Lieberman and Daniel Posner). World Development 60 (2014): 69-83.This article, a look at a large-scale intervention promoting citizen action toward improving learning in two Kenyan districts, finds no evidence of a treatment effect on private on public citizen actions and identifies key conditions necessary for information to generate citizen activism.
- Accountability without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China (Cambridge University Press, 2007).This book examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services in contexts where democratic institutions of participation and accountability may be weak.
Projects
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Projects December 2020
Governance Innovation
A new initiative combining evidence and methods from design and social science to co-develop governance solutions with practitioner partners.
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Projects May 2020
Data to Inform the Pandemic Response (Covid-19)
How can social science research provide rapid inputs to public health crises? Our team is working in East and West Africa to inform government responses to the Coronavirus pandemic.
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Projects March 2020
Building Evidence on Citizen Engagement and Government Accountability
To support engaged scholarship and build a stronger evidence base, MIT GOV/LAB is supporting research on citizen engagement and government accountability.
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Projects March 2020
Political Behavior of Development (PBD) Conference
MIT GOV/LAB holds an annual conference for scholars to present works in progress on political behavior in developing country contexts.
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Projects March 2018
Unpacking the Black Box of Government Decision-Making
What incentivizes local officials to respond to citizen needs and demands? What constraints, motivations, and considerations influence the behavior of bureaucrats?
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Projects August 2017
Community Policing and Trust in Liberia
Can community policing build confidence in the police and improve community cooperation?
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Projects March 2017
Better together? Examining the effect of civic education for local officials & citizens in the Philippines
Does providing the poor with new civic skills and opportunities to interact with powerful local officials improve accountability?
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Projects November 2015
Citizen Engagement and Voter Behavior in Tanzania
Under what conditions do voters evaluate election candidates based on performance and programmatic considerations in dominant-party systems?
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Projects November 2015
Representation or Cooptation? Examining the Effects of Community Leadership Training in the Philippines
Does providing the poor with opportunities to learn new civic skills and interact with powerful local officials and politicians improve their ability to hold the government accountable for public service provision?
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Projects November 2015
Trust and Cooperation in the Fight Against Ebola
How can governments engender compliance during a health crisis when citizens do not trust them?
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Projects September 2015
Democracy Online: Comparing Town Hall and Internet Civic Participation
How do government officials perceive citizen input provided through ICT channels versus citizen input provided through traditional channels?
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Projects November 2015
Online Civic Engagement in Kenya
How can online news sources frame information in a way that galvanizes online participatory action among those who have the economic and political capacity to participate?