Public economics

Finance

Physics

Business

Accountability

Government (linguistics)

Compliance (psychology)

Corporate governance

Politics

Philosophy

Political science

China

Psychology

Economics

Scale (ratio)

Local government

Linguistics

Democracy

Quantum mechanics

Public administration

Central government

Authoritarianism

Social psychology

American Journal of Political Science

Central governments face compliance problems when they rely on local governments to implement policy. In authoritarian political systems, these challenges are pronounced because local governments do not face citizens at the polls. In a national‐scale, randomized field experiment in China, we test whether a public, non‐governmental rating of municipal governments' compliance with central mandates to disclose information about the management of pollution increased compliance. We find significant and positive treatment effects on compliance after only one year that persist with reinforcement into a second post‐treatment year. The public rating appears to decrease the costs of monitoring compliance for the central government without increasing public and media attention to pollution, highlighting when this mode of governance is likely to emerge. These results reveal important roles that nonstate actors can play in enhancing the accountability of local governments in authoritarian political systems.

Non‐Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National‐Scale Field Experiment in China