Replication Data for: Back to ‘normal’: The short-lived impact of an online NGO campaign of government discrimination in Hungary

To what extent can civil rights NGOs protect ethnic minorities against unequal treatment? We study this question by combining an audit experiment of 1260 local governments in Hungary with an intervention conducted in collaboration with a major Hungarian civil rights NGO. In the audit experiment we demonstrated that Roma individuals were about 13%-points less likely to receive responses to information requests from local governments, and the responses they received were of substantially lower quality. The intervention that reminded a random subset of local governments of their legal responsibility of equal treatment led to a short term reduction in their discriminatory behavior, but the effects of the intervention dissipated within a month. These findings suggest that civil rights NGOs might face substantive difficulties in trying to reduce discrimination through simple information campaigns.

民权非政府组织（civil rights NGOs）能够在多大程度上保护少数族裔免受不平等待遇？本研究结合针对匈牙利1260个地方政府的审计实验，与一家大型匈牙利民权非政府组织合作开展干预措施，对该问题展开探究。本次审计实验显示，罗姆族（Roma）民众向地方政府提交信息咨询后，获得回复的概率较普通群体低13个百分点，且所获回复的质量显著更低。研究中，我们随机抽取部分地方政府，提醒其履行平等待遇的法律责任。该干预措施在短期内减少了这些政府的歧视性行为，但干预效果在一个月内便逐渐消散。上述研究结果表明，民权非政府组织若仅通过简单的信息宣传活动来减少歧视行为，可能会面临实质性的困难。