information was not collected on the location of the residences of female council members. The data provides coordinates of the residences of 1,104 male council members in 140 communities in nine out of ten evaluation districts. Although much data is missing, it is not correlated with the type of election assigned to the village.

Measures of preference fractionalization and the size and ethnic heterogeneity of villages are derived from data collected in the baseline survey, which was administered in September 2007 to 2,387 randomly-selected male heads-of-household in the 250 sample villages. Data on preference fractionalization is given by responses to a question whereby respondents were asked to indicate their preference from a list of fifteen potential projects commonly-funded by NSP. In each village v for each type of project j we calculate the share svj of respondents that indicated this project and calculate fractionalization of preferences in the village fv = 1 − � s<sup>2</sup> vj<sup>.Anindicatorofpreference</sup> fractionalization is then given by a dummy variable, which equals one if fractionalization is above the median in the sample and zero otherwise. An indicator of village size is given by a dummy variable which captures if the average distance between respondents’households is above the sample median. Ethnic heterogeneity of a village is given by a dummy variable that equals zero if all villagers belong to the same ethnicity.<sup>33</sup> A measure of the speed of project implementation is derived from NSP administrative records,<sup>34</sup> which indicate the type, budget, and start and end dates of 478 projects funded by NSP.<sup>35</sup> Project start dates range from April 2008 to February 2011 and completion dates range from July 2008 to September 2011. Two indicators are constructed, which measure the number of days between election of a council and the start of a project and the number of days between election of a council and the end of a project.<sup>36</sup> Measures of project effectiveness, improvements in general economic welfare, and increases in support for local leaders and democratic processes are derived from data collected in the midline and endline surveys. The midline survey was administered to 2,367 male and 2,141 female respondents between May and October 2009 and the endline survey was administered to 2,130 male and 1,858 female respondents between May and October 2011.<sup>37</sup> Project effectiveness is assessed by five

> 33 The measure is based on a question that asks heads of households to indicate their ethnicity with seven options: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baluch, and other. All results hold if we use a similar measure based on the question from the focus group of village leaders that asked them to indicate what ethnicities reside in the village or if we use a measure of ethnic fractionalization instead, although the latter measure of fractionalization is not very reliable given the small number of observations per village.

> 34 Information from the NSP administrative records is well correlated with the self-reported data on project completion from the midline survey, but provides more detailed information on the timing of the works.

> 35 Six projects failed and were terminated before completion. For some projects the time between the start and the end of the project was unrealistically high, so we trimmed all observations for which the duration of project implementation was above the 95th percentile. There is no significant difference in the number of trimmed observations between the two types of electoral rules.

> 36 Election dates do not depend on the type of electoral rules. The results are similar, but less precise if we look at the number of days from a specific date, common to all villages.

> 37 Because of the deterioration in security conditions, we were not able to conduct surveys of male heads of household in 11 villages at midline and in 32 villages at endline. For female heads of household the surveys were not conducted in 33 villages at midline and in 59 villages at endline. Enumerators administering the male household questionnaire were instructed to locate and interview the same households and, whenever possible, the same villagers who participated in the baseline survey. Enumerators were able to successfully locate such respondents in 65 percent of cases at midline and 44 percent of cases at endline. The predominant reason for enumerators not being able to interview baseline respondents was that the person was away from home on the day that the survey team visited the village, as it was the time of harvest. Differences in levels of attrition between villages with different electoral rules are not statistically

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