Replication Data for: Personnel Politics: Elections, Clientelistic Competition, and Teacher Hiring in Indonesia

What is the effect of increased electoral competition on patronage politics? If programmatic appeals are not credible, institutional reforms that move politics from an elite- to a mass-focused and more competitive environment increase patronage efforts. This leads to an overall surge and notable spike in discretionary state hiring in election years. We test this prediction in the context of Indonesia's decentralized education sector. We exploit the exogenous phasing in and timing of elections in Indonesian districts for causal identification. We find evidence for election-related increases in the number of contract teachers on local payrolls and increases in civil service teacher certifications, which dramatically increases salaries. These effects are particularly pronounced for districts in which the former authoritarian ruling party is in competition with new entrants.