Voters may be unable to hold politicians to account if they lack basic information about their representatives' performance. Civil society groups and international donors therefore advocate using voter information campaigns to improve democratic accountability. Yet, are these campaigns...

Evidence that information campaigns help voters select better politicians is mixed. We propose that comparative performance information and public dissemination may moderate information's effects on electoral accountability, by respectively helping voters to identify malfeasance incumbent...

A large literature examining advanced and consolidating democracies suggests that education increases political participation. However, in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and...

Voters are often uncertain about and biased against non-dominant political parties. By reducing the information gap with dominant parties, political advertising may thus disproportionately benefit non-dominant parties electorally. We test this argument in Mexico, where three main parties...

We estimate the effect of local media outlets on political accountability in Mexico, focusing on malfeasance by municipal mayors. We study federal grants earmarked for infrastructure projects targeting the poor, and leverage two sources of plausibly exogenous variation. First, we exploit...

Effective policy-making requires that voters avoid electing malfeasant politicians. However, as our simple learning model emphasizing voters' prior beliefs and updating highlights, informing voters of incumbent malfeasance may not entail sanctioning. Specifically, electoral punishment of...

This paper considers the direct and indirect effects of economic globalization on turnout in OECD countries since the 1970s. We find evidence at the individual and aggregate levels for a constraint mechanism whereby globalization reduces turnout as voters become indifferent between parties and...

While digital platforms have facilitated protests and challenged democratic norms, mass online campaigns could also enhance electoral accountability. We evaluate the electoral impact of non-partisan Facebook ads informing millions of Mexican citizens of municipal expenditure irregularities in...