In this Seminar, we explore whether and how social protection programs affect local politics by analyzing data on all village elections between 2002 and 2013.

We estimate the impacts of the largest conditional cash transfer program in the Philippines employing both a DiD design using the nationwide rollout and an RCT covering 300 villages.

The program increased the number of candidates, especially of eligible women, in village elections. Eligible women are  also more likely to be elected village captain. Effects appear to be driven, not by the easing of the budget constraint by the cash transfer, but by the leadership opportunities that the program created among beneficiary households.>

Finally, we show that the program reduced the importance of family networks in elections which we interpret as being consistent with a decline in clientelism. Together, these results highlight local elections as an important component of the general equilibrium effects of social protection programs.

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