1 Chief for a Day: Elite Capture and Management Performance Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sierra Leone Ty Turley, 1 Maarten Voors, 2,3,* Erwin Bulte, 3 Andreas Kontoleon, 2 and John A. List 4 1 : Romney Institute of Public Management, Brigham Young University, Email: tyturley@gmail.com 2 : Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Email: ak219@cam.ac.uk and maarten.voors@wur.nl (* corresponding author) 3 : Development Economics Group, Wageningen University, Email: erwin.bulte@wur.nl 4 : Department of Economics, The University of Chicago, Email: jlist@uchicago.edu Abstract: This paper uses a field experiment in Sierra Leone to examine how the identity of the manager influences rent seeking and performance in participatory development projects. Specifically, we vary the composition of the committee responsible for implementing a development project—local elites or randomly selected villagers. The design is unique, in that it permits us to explore the effectiveness of two alternative local governance modalities and the extent of elite capture in community projects. We find little evidence that local elites capture project resources, but we do observe they are better managers of development projects. Improved performance co-varies with our proxy for power of the local chief. Keywords: Development aid, chieftaincy, corruption, local governance Funding: This work was supported by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [N.W.O. grant # 453-10-001], the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme, and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. Acknowledgements: We are indebted to the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the Gola Rain Forest National Park Program (supported by the European Union, Fond Française pour l’Environnement Mondial, and the Global Conservation Fund at Conservation International), BirdLife International and Paul Richards for their collaboration in this project. We thank Jan Duchoslav, Koen Leuveld, Esther Mokuwa, Phuong Ta and Lizzy van de Wal and a team of field enumerators for able research assistance. We are grateful for the patience and cooperation of interviewees. We thank seminar participants in Cambridge (BIOECON), Bergen (SEEDEC), Oxford (CSAE), Wageningen, Hohenheim, and Tilburg.