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

Nancy Qian, Padró i Miquel, Gerard, Monica Martinez-Bravo and Yang Yao

No 8368, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

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: Accountability; Democracy; Institutions; Public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

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Working Paper: Do Local Elections in Non-Democracies Increase Accountability? Evidence from Rural China (2011)
Working Paper: Do Local Elections in Non-Democracies Increase Accountability? Evidence from Rural China (2011)
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