11:00 - 13:15
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Sandra Leon
Discussant/s:
Ignacio Jurado
Meeting Room H

Andrea Fumarola
Accountable to whom? Representative-voter congruence on views of representation

Guillermo Toral
Turnover: How electoral accountability disrupts the bureaucracy and service delivery

Ken Stiller, Giuseppe Spatafora
Parliament without Accountability? Electoral Party Platforms and Intra-Faction Coherence in the European Parliament

Olga Gasparyan
Devolution in Non-Democratic Regimes: Local Efficiency and Resource Allocation in Russian Cities
Devolution in Non-Democratic Regimes: Local Efficiency and Resource Allocation in Russian Cities
Olga Gasparyan
University of Rochester

Although there exists a number of studies about decentralization, it has rarely been examined in non-democracies. Local officials in non-democratic regimes are accountable upwards, to the center, and downwards, to the local population. This paper compares elected and appointed mayors in contemporary Russia. It leverages the federal regulation to phase-out local elections, which allows applying the difference-in-differences methodology. The empirical analysis is based on a new budget dataset for 463 Russia cities and over 9 millions city-level public procurement purchases. The paper focuses on three outcomes: taxation, efficiency in procurement and distribution of procurement contracts to local vs. non-local firms. Information about a future change from selection by election to the selection by appointment makes mayors spend more, tax more, be less efficient and divert more municipal contracts to non-local suppliers. These results are amplified in cases with elected governors, who are more likely to monitor mayors' behavior. Selection rule explains the heterogeneity of fiscal outcomes through differences in the local officials' incentives. Subnational elections in non-democracies incentivize local politicians to be more efficient, but mostly to preserve their positions in office.