Custom Elections and Local Policies: The Case of Canada’s First Nations

Abstract

We examine the effect of community-designed electoral codes on Canadian First Nation communities. Adopting a custom code for local elections allows for changes such as increasing term duration, creating appeal and supervisory bodies, and incorporating traditional governance elements. To reduce biases due to selective opt-in, we exploit the timing of the electoral reform and a rich set of controls. We find that bands using the custom systems pay lower remunerations to their chiefs, spend more on education and training and less on band development, and have better wastewater services but show no sizable differences in income, population, or employment.