Do Elites Know Best? Candidate Selection and Policy Implementation in Postindependence Tanzania

How do candidate selection processes shape policy outcomes? Studying Tanzania’s initial single-party legislative elections, I assess how electing candidates preferred by party elites affected policy implementation, which emphasized rural development during this period. Leveraging the deterministic assignment of ballot symbols—which was orthogonal to candidate characteristics but had large electoral effects—finds that their election substantially increased the supply of salient local public goods. Assembling novel candidate-level data, I document that elites prioritized candidates’ national prominence while voters prioritized their local ties. Rather than representing misaligned incentives, the results are consistent with elites, in an incipient regime, more quickly understanding which characteristics would matter for candidates’ performance in office. Beyond highlighting novel conditions under which elite-led candidate selection facilitates responsiveness, the results underscore the distributive consequences of candidate selection even in nondemocratic settings.