Is Basic Democracy Enough?
Presented by:
Cory Smith
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Maryland
Friday, April 11, 2025
12:00 pm-1:15 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
In many contexts, elections only partially determine political authority. I examine the impacts of increasing electoral representation in Pakistan’s 1960s local councils known as the “Basic Democracies.” Councils were comprised of members either popularly elected or directly appointed by the military-led government. A formulaic quirk in the establishing law caused their relative proportion of elected members to fluctuate in an alternating pattern as a function of council size. I use this pattern to show that councils with more elected members causally raised less revenue and provided fewer public services. Convergence is slow in this setting and gaps in both public goods and measures of economic activity persist over a 50-year period to 2020. I provide evidence that the primary mechanism is diminished activity within the council, reflecting either less ability or willingness to provide public goods. Higher levels of government do not contribute to the effect as differences in public goods provided by them are tightly estimated around zero. My results notably diverge from positive effects found in research studying comprehensive democratic transitions. They can thus inform our understanding of when elections are effective, particularly in institutions that mix democratic and nondemocratic elements.