Career Concerns and Pro-Sociality in Political Selection: Evidence from Village Elections in Pakistan

What motivates people to seek political office? We design and evaluate an experiment to study how non-elite prospective politicians can be motivated to seek political office by priming them on career or pro-social motivation from entering politics, reducing the cost of filing for candidacy, and providing a signal on individual-level electability. We interview the universe of candidates in 210 villages and study the between village differences in candidate characteristics, and voting behavior.