The solution to weak bureaucratic capacity in developing countries is often presumed to be more accountability. This paper shows how accountability initiatives, intended to reduce corruption, can actually hinder the development of capable government agencies by making it harder for directors to recruit experts and spend their budgets. It further highlights a common way public servants escape the accountability rules that limit their effectiveness: outsourcing bureaucracies to nonstate organizations. This practice of outsourcing bureaucracy to avoid accountability rules creates what I call “shadow” state capacity and, paradoxically, it may help explain “pockets of effectiveness” among government social programs in developing countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews and descriptive statistics, I show how outsourcing was a critical factor in producing two of Brazil’s most vaunted social sector programs. However, I also suggest that outsourcing bureaucracy may ultimately limit state capacity, even if it helps to build capable programs in the short run.

Women have traditionally been held back from performing to their full potential in creative project teams, where they typically constitute a minority. However, due to recent technological developments, the structure of teamwork is rapidly evolving. Specifically, teamwork is now often performed asynchronously: members of teams work at different times, by themselves, rather than simultaneously and together. How will this shift to asynchronous teamwork affect the performance of men and women on creative project teams? This article argues that women will perform better when teamwork is asynchronous rather than synchronous, because working alone will afford them greater freedom for creative expression. We argue that men will not experience the same boost in performance, and thus the spread of asynchronous teamwork has the potential to reduce gender disparities in performance. We explore this question in the context of folk-music ensembles in eastern India. After collecting ethnographic and interview data from folk musicians to develop our theory, we conducted a field experiment in which individual singers, men and women, recorded a song both synchronously and asynchronously with the same set of instrumentalists. This article contributes to the study of gender inequality, creativity, and the temporal restructuring of work.