[AEW Webinar] It Takes a Village Election: Turnover and Performance in Local Bureaucracies
Date: Thursday, Sep 11, 2025, 09:30 ~ 11:15
Speaker: Samuel Bazzi (UCSD)
Location: Webinar
◈ Keynote : "It Takes a Village Election: Turnover and Performance in Local Bureaucracies," with Masyhur Hilmy
◈ AEW Discussion : "Adulterated Spice: Lead Poisoning, Conflicts, and Fertility," by Xinming Du and Shan Zhang.
◈ 발표자 : Samuel Bazzi (UCSD)◈ 일 시 : 2025년 9월 11일 목요일 9:30 ~ 11:15
◈ 장 소 : Webinar via WebEx
Webinar 참석을 위해 아래 링크를 통한 사전 등록이 필요합니다:
Abstract:
In many countries, local governments struggle with inefficiency and corruption, often perpetuated by entrenched elites. This paper explores how leadership changes affect local bureaucratic performance. Combining personnel and citizen surveys with a regression discontinuity design in a large sample of Indonesian villages, we show that turnovers in village elections revitalize local bureaucracies, disrupt nepotistic networks, and improve local government performance. Bureaucrats serving new leaders are more engaged and less likely to be tied to past or present village officials, resulting in a more responsive bureaucracy that interacts more with citizens and better understands their needs. This improves public service provision, measured in both administrative data and citizen surveys. Overall, our results show that leadership changes can mitigate elite capture and improve governance at the grassroots level.