Calendrier du 03 décembre 2015
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 03/12/2015 de 12:30 à 14:00
MARTINEZ-BRAVO Monica (CEMFI)
An Empirical Investigation of the Legacies of Non-Democratic Regimes: The Case of Soeharto's Mayors in Indonesia - SALLE 8
écrit avec Priya Mukherjee and Andreas Stegmann
A large theoretical literature argues that the legacies of non-democratic regimes can affect the quality of governance in new democracies. However, the empirical evidence on the effects of these legacies is scarce. This paper exploits a natural experiment that took place in the Indonesian democratic transition: the mayors of the Soeharto regime were allowed to finish
their five year terms before being replaced by new leaders. Since mayors' political cycles were
not synchronised, this event generated exogenous variation on how long the agents of the old
regime remained in their position and, hence, on the degree of control that they exerted during
the democratic transition. The results suggest that districts that had an old-regime mayor for
longer exhibit worse governance outcomes and tend to vote more for Soeharto's party. These
effects persist several years after the old-regime mayors are no longer in office and are robust
to controlling for subsequent political reforms. The results are consistent with the hypothesis
that slower transitions towards democracy allow the old-regime elites to find ways to capture
democracy in the medium and long run.