Do Perceptions Match Provision? Investigating the Gap between Levels of Service Provision and Citizen Perceptions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Do citizens' evaluation of government services accord with actual service provision by the government? Some argue that citizens are able to reward or sanction politicians on the basis of service provision and governance quality. Known as retrospective voting, this theory allows even uninformed voters to evaluate politicians while still not following politics or party platforms. Many authors, however, have questioned the core assumption of retrospective voting theories: that citizens are even capable of accurately evaluating service provision. When faced with the same objective level of service provision, two voters may evaluate that service differently, leading to a in evaluating services. This project investigates the perception gap, using a finite mixture model to test competing explanations for why citizens might mis-evaluate government service provision. We find that while the presence of the perception gap is difficult to predict, the direction of mis-evaluation is explained by sociotropic effects more than respondent identity or respondent engagement, though with major inter- and intra-country heterogeneity.