Local Elites, Candidate Selection, and Distributive Politics in Tanzania

• In Event: Political Leadership

Abstract

Do voters benefit from electing candidates preferred by local elites? In weakly-institutionalized settings, elite-representative linkages are often important for the production of local public goods which rely on the mobilization of community labor inputs. If so, local elite support for ultimately successful candidates may condition the provision of public goods which particularly benefit non-elite citizens. I study Tanzania’s first single-party legislative elections when two candidates per constituency, one strongly preferred by local elites, sought office. The quasi-random assignment of a particular ballot symbol, which increased the probability of the elite-preferred candidate’s victory by 24 percentage points, instruments for their election. Drawing on archival and administrative data, causal estimates indicate that their election increased the overall supply of basic public goods, particularly to rural localities, with no effects on a set of placebo public goods. The results are driven by the independent effect of local elite support on legislators’ behavior rather than variation in legislator characteristics.

Author

• Jeremy Bowles, Stanford University