Pro-social or Career Motivated Politicians? Evidence from Village Elections in Pakistan

In this project, we design three experiments that provide the first experimental evidence on 1) what motivates people to seek political office, 2) how certain types of people can be encouraged to become politicians, and 3) whether voters care to put certain types of politicians in office. In the first experiment, we examine the process of candidacy by randomizing at the individual level three factors that contribute to a citizens decision to seek political office: 1) expected benefits, by making salient private or prosocial benefits from seeking office, 2) costs, by providing a lawyer to help file papers, and 3) the probability of election, by polling the village and providing this information to prospective politicians. In the second experiment, we consider specific policy responses that can be used to help certain types of people, such as the non- elite, to seek office. We test to see if messages delivered through canvassing and/or training can encourage people to participate in politics by seeking office. In the final experiment, we examine if voters care about who runs for political office. We run a get-out-the-vote experiment that provides random village-level variation in turnout at the village level. We use this experiment as an instrument for turnout to study how characteristics of the elected council change when marginal voters vote.