Replication Data for: Building Infrastructure and Cohesion: Evidence From a Field Experiment in War-torn Eastern Congo

A defining feature of contemporary Community-Driven Development (CDD) interventions in war-torn countries is their pursuit of transformative objectives, seeking to involve and reshape local decision-making institutions in the process. In recent years there has been a push for a programmatic overhaul of CDD approaches, including more realistic goal-setting focusing on infrastructure provision and capacity building of local institutions. We investigate, through a large-scale field experiment involving 446 villages in war-torn Eastern Congo, the effects of a CDD program that embodied these innovative features. Our strategy allows us to identify causal impacts of the CDD intervention, in its basic form consisting of a $100,000 envelope to finance an infrastructure project with an emphasis on ‘local content’, as well as when augmented with a complementary conflict mitigation component. We find largely null results across the four families of outcomes: infrastructure access and quality, social cohesion, (violent) conflict, and economic well-being. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications and avenues for further research.