different dimensions of empowerment among citizens.<sup>2</sup> This paper is an effort to fill this lacuna through the blending of qualitative methods with rigorous quasi-experimental quantitative methods employed to construct a credible counterfactual group.<sup>3</sup> Specifically, we employ the difference-in-differences method on individual survey data collected before and after the completion of the ATI pilot project using observations from treatment municipalities and a comparison group of municipalities selected by the method of “nearest neighbor” matching.

The ATI pilot relates to empowerment in many ways. First, information itself is power. In particular civic education allows individuals to be better equipped to take advantage of opportunities, access services, exercise their rights, and demand better institutions and services. In addition knowledge about the freedom of information law’s roles on institution development could turn individuals into legal activists empowered to exercise the law.<sup>4</sup> Second, participation and inclusion of the poor together are critical at ensuring that limited public resources represent local priorities and do not exacerbate inequalities that could be reinforced by the exclusive participation of the local elites. The World Development Report 2004 is devoted entirely to the role of citizens’ voice and participation in holding politicians accountable. Empowerment of poor citizens can increase their influence in policymaking or align their interests with those of politicians, thus making basic services reach the poor. The report also defends that “non-governmental or civil society organizations can also help amplify the voice voices of the poor, coordinate

> 2 Our research also contributes to the literature on information and participatory programs. Previous impact evaluations of such programs in developing countries have mostly focused on public health and education service delivery. Studies typically find positive impacts on knowledge about health issues (Duflo, Dupas, Kremer and Sinei, 2006), on awareness of parents about the school roles or education (Pandey, Goyal and Sundararaman, 2007); Keefer and Khemani, 2011), on participation in community meetings or in the monitoring of service providers (Pandey et al, 2007; Pandey, Goyal and Sundararaman, 2007; Bjorkman and Svensson, 2009), in volunteering for small group community work (Banerji, Duflo, Glennerster and Khemani, 2010), on investment in schools (Reinikka and Svensson, 2011; Bjorkman, 2008; Andrabi, Das and Khwaja, 2009), and on parental investment in education (e.g., Keefer and Khemani, 2011).

> 3 Goncalves (2009) is perhaps the closest study to ours. She analyzes the gradual implementation of Participatory Budgeting (PB) across Brazilian municipalities. This program is similar to the ATI pilot, but more specifically, it consists of a participatory mechanism in which citizens negotiate with government officials over budget allocation and investment priorities. Using the difference-in differences method, she finds that the adoption of PB increased the spending that matches popular preferences as expressed in the participatory fora. In particular, it almost doubled spending in health and sanitation in the PB municipalities compared to the municipalities where PB was not implemented.

> 4 For related discussion on legalist studies, see for example Gauri (2009), World Bank (2005) and references therein.

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