their electoral advantage. Assuming that members of pre-existing elites are less qualified than potential challengers, this would increase the quality of elected representatives. The viability of this explanation is explored by examining the share of council members who were members of the de facto elite, for which data was collected from villagers in the baseline survey administered prior to the council elections.<sup>51</sup> The results indicate that electoral rules have no significant effect on the share of council members that also belong to the group of pre-existing elites (see Table C5 in Appendix C). In fact, one measure provides a marginally significant positive effect of at-large elections on the share of council members who were named as members of the pre-existing elite. Similar results are obtained if we look at the proportion of pre-existing elite members who were subsequently elected to the council, with no significant difference between villages that used alternative electoral rules. Overall, the results indicate that electoral rules have no significant effect on the electoral advantage of pre-existing elites.

Yet another potential explanation is that educational attainment serves as a proxy for candidate competence if voters do not have precise information. In district elections, the size of the districts is smaller and voters are likely to have better information about candidates, so they do not need to rely on proxies such as educational attainment. In at-large elections, by contrast, the larger size of districts leads to greater reliance on educational attainment as a proxy for candidate competence. While this interpretation could potentially explain the observation that at-large elections are associated with more educated representatives, it does a poor job of explaining why the results are stronger in more heterogeneous villages and why the educational attainment of elected representatives is on average lower in more heterogeneous villages. Specifically, in more heterogeneous villages, voters are likely to have less information on candidates, so according to this explanation voters should rely on formal education more. In addition, this explanation cannot account for the results on the locations of the elected representatives’homes.

Differences in the competence of elected representatives may also reflect differences in barriers to entry, which are higher in electoral systems with small district magnitudes (Myerson, 1993). However, this explanation is not relevant in our context, as all citizens are considered candidates and there are no barriers to entry.

The observed correlation between at-large elections and representatives’competence may also be driven by the advantage given by at-large elections to competent candidates for reasons other than voting decisions by citizens. For instance, if candidates garner support through rallies (public speeches) and bribes (vote-buying) during the campaign and public speeches are more important in larger districts due to economies of scale, competent candidates will be advantaged in at-large elections if they have a comparative advantage in public speaking (and a comparative disadvantage at vote-buying).<sup>52</sup> This explanation, while attractive theoretically, cannot explain the results of the field experiment, as political campaigning was forbidden and election monitoring indicated no evidence of vote-buying. In addition, this story does not imply any correspondence between electoral rules and the location of representatives’houses, which contradicts the experimental results.

> 51 The share of council members that were members of the pre-existing elite, even if we use the most inclusive definition of pre-existing elites, is 39 percent, which indicates that pre-existing elites do not dominate the elected council.

> 52 This explanation relies on a strong assumption that higher quality candidates are relatively better at speaking and not at bribing, which may or may not be true.

26