Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on October 22, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Masaaki Higashijima. Moderated by Timothy Frye.
Do elections for local leaders boost informal tax collection and public goods provision? Existing observational and lab experiments find inconclusive effects, with some studies showing that traditional, unelected leaders secure greater contributions. Masaaki Higashijima combines a natural experiment—the random timing of the introduction of village elections in Kazakhstan—with a survey experiment to test whether elected leaders elicit greater citizen willingness to contribute to local projects than leaders appointed by higher authorities. He also expects stronger effects among men than women. The analysis shows elected village chiefs attract greater contributions than appointed chiefs. Surprisingly, the effect is more pronounced for women, suggesting elections are particularly important for encouraging women’s participation in local governance. These findings indicate that elections can increase contributions in settings where unelected chiefs lack traditional authority and are appointed by higher entities.
Masaaki Higashijima is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. He is currently affiliated with the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His research interests include comparative political economy, autocratic politics, regime change, and Central Asia. His work has appeared in premier political science journals, such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, and World Development. He published his first book, “The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box: Electoral Manipulation, Economic Maneuvering, and Political Order in Autocracies” (University of Michigan Press, 2022), which won the Honorable Mention of the ASEEES Ed A. Hewett Book Prize. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at Michigan State University in 2015.
