Session description:

How can communities identify and encourage more capable individuals to enter public office?

This presentation examines a field intervention in Sierra Leone that combined community nominations, assessments of technocratic skills, and information sharing with political parties to identify high-quality local political candidates. The study finds that the process successfully uncovered candidates with stronger qualifications and broader public support than many existing officeholders and aspiring politicians. While these candidates were more likely to enter electoral politics, entrenched party gatekeeping often limited their success at the ballot box by favoring incumbent candidates. The findings offer new insights into political recruitment, representation, and the institutional barriers to improving the quality of elected leadership.

Speaker biography:

Katherine Casey is the RoAnn Costin Professor of Political Economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Faculty Director of the King Center on Global Development. Her research explores the interactions between economic and political forces in developing countries, with particular interest in the role of information in enhancing political accountability, the influence of foreign aid on economic development, and the provision of public infrastructure. Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others.