Do Local Elections in Non-Democracies Increase Accountability? Evidence from Rural China

Do Local Elections in Non-Democracies Increase Accountability? Evidence from Rural China
Monica Martinez-Bravoy, Gerard Padro i Miquelz, Nancy Qian and Yang Yao
4/12/2011 (First Version: 9/1/2007)

Abstract

We use unique survey data to study whether the introduction of local elections in China
made local leaders more accountable towards local constituents. We develop a simple model
to predict the effects on different policies of increasing local leader accountability, taking into
account that there is an autocratic upper government. We exploit variation in the timing of the
top-down introduction of elections across villages to estimate the causal effects of elections and
find that elections affected policy outcomes in a way that is consistent with the predicted effects
of increased local leader accountability.

Keywords: Institutions, Elections, Leader Accountability, Local Democracy, Public Goods.