timing stems from Indonesia’s democratic transition, as district mayors appointed in the final years of the Suharto era were allowed to complete their terms (Martinez-Bravo et al., 2017). The 2021–22 group serves as a placebo, as elections held after the 2021 _Podes_ survey should not affect service outcomes measured in 2021.

We find that improvements in service provision grow over time. Effects are nearly twice as large in villages that held elections in 2015–17 (column 2) compared to those with more recent elections (column 3), while, as expected, there is no evidence of improvements in villages where elections occurred after the _Podes_ wave (column 4). This pattern is consistent with the idea that the benefits of turnover take time to materialize, potentially reflecting short-run adjustment costs (Akhtari et al., 2022). While these comparisons are based on variation in election timing that is plausibly exogenous, they should be interpreted as suggestive given the possibility of residual variation across cohorts (e.g., differences in baseline institutional quality or geographic composition).

# **5.2 Perceived Service Provision and Village Government Actions in Survey Data**

**Main Results.** Our survey data provides further evidence that perceptions of service access and quality improved, and village governments were more likely to take action on public services when the village experienced an electoral turnover. We examine citizens’ views and reported village investments on the public goods that most closely correspond to those enumerated in _Podes_ , namely water access, garbage collection, roads, electricity (for street lighting), kindergartens, primary schools, and local healthcare delivery. Here, we look at service provision along both the extensive margin (whether the service is accessible in the village) and the intensive margin (reported service quality, based on citizens’ ratings of service provision for each type of service on a 5-point Likert scale). Table 7, columns 2–3 report the results for citizens’ perceptions, while column 4 examines actions taken by the village government to improve service provision, as reported in our surveys of village heads. Figure 6 presents RD plots.

Overall, citizens in turnover villages report an increase in both service access and quality: averaging across all services, the reported access rate is 78% in control villages, and this increases by 8 p.p. at the RD threshold (column 2), while the perceived quality of these services increases by 0.21 s.d. (column 3). Both estimates are significant at the 5% level.<sup>12</sup> Consistent with these effects, village governments in turnover villages were more likely to have taken action or made investments in the past twelve months to improve local service quality. Across services, 76% of villages have taken such action to improve service quality, and this increases by 16 p.p. at the threshold (column 4).

Appendix Table A.18 reports effects on the individual components of the two indices of service access and service quality examined in Table 7, columns 2–3. In turnover villages, the most improved service according to citizens is garbage collection, in line with the findings in Appendix Table A.14. Citizens also report improvements in the condition of roads, whereas in the administrative data, we observe improvements in street lighting (Appendix Table A.14, column 5), paved roads (column 6), and public

> 12One concern could be that the sample of citizens, drawn from a snowball process with village officials, may be more favorably inclined towards the government. However, this bias would naturally arise on both sides of the RD cutoff. In Appendix Table A.3, we report balance checks on whether a citizen’s contact information is provided by a village official or BPD member. Neither of these variables is statistically significant.

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