This paper shows that the body of appointed officials that a new democracy inherits from the previous regime is a key determinant of the extent of electoral fraud and clientelistic spending in new democracies. I develop a model that predicts that appointed officials have stronger incentives to influence voters during national level elections because of their career concerns. I test the implications of the model using data from Indonesia's transition to democracy. Both the pattern of alignment of electoral results between village and district levels and the pattern of subsequent turnover of appointed village heads corroborate the predictions of the model. (JEL D72, H77, H83, O17, O18)The transitions of nondemocratic regimes to democracy present a number of economic and political challenges. In addition to experiencing political instability and social unrest, nascent democracies operate in the context of the institutional legacy of the previous nondemocratic regime, which can condition the outcome of the first democratic elections and thus the economic and political equilibrium. One of these legacies is the body of local officials: 1 in most democratic transitions, a majority of local officials selected during the nondemocratic regime remain in their positions at the time of the first democratic election. The difficulties inherent in undertaking several simultaneous reforms in the aftermath of the fall of a nondemocratic regime can prevent an immediate turnover in the government administration, especially among the lower-and local-level ranks.There is extensive documentation of the fact that new democracies differ from established democracies in their economic and political outcomes. For instance, 1 Several scholars have documented the key role that local officials play in nondemocratic regimes and regimes in transition.

IN THIS SUBSECTION, we present a theoretical model that formalizes the mechanism that, we argue, is behind our empirical results. This model is an adaptation of the one presented in Acemoglu and Robinson (2008). We implement a number of modifications to their setting to adapt it to the Indonesian context. Furthermore, we impose a number of assumptions that make the exposition easier and help us focus on the main result of interest. We refer the interested reader to Acemoglu and Robinson (2008) for a thorough description of the interactions between the agents of the model and for additional insights and results.Consider a society made up of an elite and citizens. The country is divided into equallysized districts, each with a population of M elites. The elite and citizens regularly contest power in each district. The group that wins power makes decisions over economic institutions. We denote by s t ∈ {E C} the group that is in power in period t, with E referring to the elite and C referring to citizens. When the elite is in power, they choose their most beneficial set of economic institutions obtaining payoff R e . When the citizens are in power, the set of economic institutions that citizens choose leads to a payoff of R c for the elite. We define R = R e − R c > 0 as the difference between these two payoffs.The game starts as a dictatorship and the elite is in power in all districts. However, for reasons exogenous to the local power dynamics, the country becomes democratic. Local-level elections are scheduled in all districts. We assume that the group that wins the election remains in power forever, and as a result, the subsequent regime becomes an absorbing state. 1The electoral equilibrium is determined by the relative level of political power of both groups. Political power is defined by the interaction of de jure political power and de facto political power. Since citizens are the most numerous group, democratization grants citizens with a baseline amount of de jure political power equal to p > 0. The overall level of political power that citizens have at the time of the local election isMonica Martinez-Bravo: mmb@cemfi.es Priya Mukherjee: pmukherjee@wm.edu Andreas Stegmann: stegmann@cemfi.edu.es 1 Our static framework is in sharp contrast to the model in Acemoglu and Robinson (2008) which is fully dynamic. The result we focus on is also present in a dynamic version of the model.

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. AbstractWe 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.

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In July 2011, the Pakistani public learnt that the CIA had used a vaccination campaign as cover to capture Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban leveraged on this information and launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign to discredit vaccines and vaccination workers. We evaluate the effects of these events on immunization by implementing a Difference-in-Differences strategy across cohorts and districts. We find that vaccination rates declined between 23% and 39% in districts in the 90th percentile of Islamist support relative to those in the 10th percentile. These results suggest that information discrediting vaccination campaigns can negatively affect trust in health services and demand for immunization.