Pay Incentives to Run for Local Governments

In recent years, advanced democracies have witnessed a marked decline in candidates for local government office, undermining electoral competition and accountability and triggering a sheer political recruitment crisis. Although several factors may contribute to this trend—such as generalized disaffection with politics—we focus on politicians’ salaries, one of the few policy instruments that policymakers can directly adjust to influence the decision to pursue a political career. To this end, we examine a large-scale reform that significantly increased local politicians’ salaries using the newly proposed time-shifted control design (TSCD)—a counterfactual method that exploits misaligned local election dates to estimate treatment effects. We show that pay incentives increase the number of candidates, especially those new to the political arena. In less affluent areas or those with fewer entry barriers, the pay rise also drew a larger number of women mayoral candidates, with an increase in their probability of being elected. In the poorest contexts, we also observe a shift in the profile of councilors and members of the mayor’s executive committee, where the pay rise attracted individuals with lower educational levels but with experience in white-collar positions.