for the location of a public good (e.g., a drinking well). The location of the public good is to be decided by a two-member local body, elected by village residents, through a bargaining process. Under at-large elections, each resident has two votes and can vote for any two candidates.<sup>2</sup> Under district elections, the village is split into two geographically-defined districts and each citizen can only vote for a candidate residing in the same district. The number of residents capable of making effective policy decisions is assumed to be small and voters thereby trade off candidates’ policy preferences with candidates’ competence.<sup>3</sup> The model predicts that in district elections, voters prefer candidates with more extreme policy preferences over more competent candidates, as they expect such candidates to achieve a better outcome in the bargaining game with candidates elected from other districts. In at-large elections, these strategic considerations are less pronounced, so voters are more willing to elect competent candidates. The difference between the two electoral systems is magnified in villages with more heterogeneous policy preferences.

The predictions of the theoretical model are tested with data from a field experiment covering 250 villages across Afghanistan. The experiment induced randomized variation in the electoral rules governing the composition of community development councils that were mandated to make decisions on the type and location of a package of local public goods. Of the 250 villages, 125 were randomly selected to compose development councils by district elections. Per this procedure, each village was divided into several single-member districts, with candidates elected from each district separately and exclusively by villagers residing in that same district. The other 125 villages were assigned to at-large elections. Per this procedure, each village constituted one multi-member district, with villagers facing no restriction on which candidates in the village they could vote for. Development council members were accordingly elected based on the number of votes garnered across the whole village. Under both electoral rules, all villagers were automatically considered candidates.

The results of the field experiment are consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model. Specifically, we find that at-large elections result in the election of more competent representatives, as proxied by their level of education.<sup>4</sup> The effect is strong in heterogeneous villages (as measured by the divergence of villagers’ex-ante policy preferences, the geographic size of villages, and ethnic composition) and is absent in homogenous villages. We also find evidence that district elections result in the election of representatives with more biased preferences over the location of local public goods, as proxied by the location of their houses. We show that the results are not consistent with a number of alternative explanations, such as restrictions on the number of qualified candidates that can be elected from the same district or differences in incumbency advantage.

This paper contributes to an extensive literature analyzing the effects of electoral systems in

> 2 This is in line with Cox (1984), who was the first to study double member districts formally. The key difference is that in Cox (1984), voters vote sincerely and candidates choose positions strategically. In this paper, voters are strategic, but candidates’positions are fixed and tied to their location of residence.

> 3 In a richer model, voters would face other trade-offs as well. For example, van Weelden (2013) demonstrates a trade-off between aggregating preferences (choosing politicians with preferences of the median voter) and providing them with incentives to exert effort. There, the median voter prefers politicians with biased preferences, because they may be effectively punished without hurting the median voter by electing their polar opposites. Our focus is purely on political selection.

> 4 Education as a proxy for the quality of politicians has been previously used in Besley, Pande, and Rao (2005), Galasso and Nannicini (2011), Gagliarducci and Nannicini (2013), Folke, Persson, and Rickne (2014).

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