predicted probability that community members will view their councillors as trustworthy. There are several potential explanations for this finding. Dependence on non-state actors for health care may prompt citizens to wonder whether their councillors are trustworthy and are trying to serve their best interests. Likewise, the provision of health care by local governments may strengthen citizens’ confidence that their local councillors are doing their best to try and improve citizens’ welfare. Alternatively, the quality of health care provision in Sierra Leone may be higher in government clinics than in NGO and mission clinics and citizens may be crediting councillors for the former and blaming councillors for the latter. The NPS does not include questions that would allow us to directly test who citizens credit or blame for public goods provision and whether citizens hold government accountable for non-state service provision.<sup>13</sup> Our objective indicator of the quality of health clinic infrastructure, the presence of a functioning refrigerator in a community’s health clinic, is positive and significant and the effect size of this variable is slightly stronger in 2008 than in 2007. Once we include this indicator in the model, the variable, the amount of health transfers to local governments, is no longer significant. Living in a community that has a health clinic with a functioning refrigerator corresponds to a percentage point increase of 6 and 8 in the predicted probability of viewing councillors as trustworthy in 2007 and in 2008, respectively. Although itemized local government budgets (within-sector allocations) are not available to cross-validate this finding, we interpret these results to suggest that local governments are spending a part of their health budgets on infrastructure and these visible improvements are enhancing citizens’ beliefs about local authorities’ trustworthiness. Our subjective measure of the quality of health care is positively correlated with our dependent variable and is slightly stronger in 2008 than in 2007. The difference in the predicted probability of viewing councillors as trustworthy in 2007 and 2008 is 9.0 and 12.0 percentage points, respectively, higher for respondents who are satisfied with health care than respondents who are dissatisfied with health care. We do not find any association between a health clinic’s provision of free or low cost treatment and beliefs about councillors’ trustworthiness.

Compared to other services, the registration of births and deaths is the most decentralized sector. Even in Kono district, where the local council worked with UNICEF to register 45,000 children (Foster and Glennester, 2009, p. 81), there is no association between a respondent’s experience with registering births and their beliefs about local councillors’ trustworthiness. By comparison, the association between experience with registering a death and a perception of local councillors as trustworthy is positive and significant. In both 2007 and 2008, the difference in the predicted probability of viewing councillors as trustworthy between someone who does not have any experience with registering a family member’s death and someone who has that experience is 7 percentage points.<sup>14</sup>

> 13Survey evidence from Zambia (Sacks 2011), for example, suggests that when dissatisfied with donor and non-state actor service provision, citizens tend to attribute these services to the government. By comparison, when satisfied with government services, citizens tend to attribute them to donors and non-state actors.

> 14Foster and Glennester (2009, p. 80) report that the least isolated communities saw the greatest improvements in the registration of deaths from 2005 to 2008. We test whether the effect of having registered a family member’s death on one’s belief about local councillors’ trustworthiness is dependent on one’s geographical

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