Training
newly-elected mayors to strengthen local governance in Peru 

In Peru, municipalities represent the front line of public administration. Over 1,800 mayors are elected every four years, and since 2025, their immediate re-election has been prohibited. Municipalities are responsible for providing basic public services, such as drinking water, sanitation, roads and waste management, to often isolated and vulnerable communities. However, local elected officials often have little prior experience and receive no structured institutional support. Peru's elected officials are among the least experienced in the world (Barturo and Elkink, 2021).

This situation has tangible consequences for the lives of local residents: on average, 22% of households are not connected to a drinking water supply and 61% do not have access to sanitation (INEI, 2017). In rural and deprived areas, this failure of local governance is directly responsible for higher rates of infant mortality, particularly from waterborne diseases (Bancalari, 2024).

A general climate of distrust is exacerbating these issues: in 2025, 85% of Peruvians believed that elected officials do not care about ordinary citizens (IPSOS, 2025). And yet, the resources are available: local governments receive natural resource revenues through tax-transfer schemes, and are responsible for 40% of national public investment (IMF, 2025).

To address this issue, the research team will evaluate a targeted and low-cost initiative to train mayors from the moment they take office.

Drawing on NGOs' previous experience of training local elected officials in Latin America, and ahead of the upcoming municipal elections in October 2026, the project aims to assess the impact of a training program delivered by the NGO Recambio and the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, both known for their prior work with elected officials, within the sub-regional network Democracia+. This training program is highly innovative because it addresses two key aspects of local governance:

• Public management expertise, including human resource management, budget planning, and knowledge of Peruvian administrative systems.
• Participatory democracy practices, focusing on accountability to citizens, relations with opposition parties, and the functioning of municipal councils.

The program is delivered via blended learning (in-person and online), to make it accessible to mayors from geographical regions across the country, rather than a solely classroom-based course.

The evaluation is based on a randomized controlled trial involving 300 newly-elected mayors split into three groups: a control group that will receive no training, a group that will study public management skills only, and a group following the full curriculum (public management and democratic skills).

The evaluation will assess the impact of the training program two years after the mayors have taken office, against three key indicators:

• Access to public services: percentage of households with access to water, sanitation, waste collection services, roads, and electricity, assessed on a district and individual level.
• Democratic governance and citizen satisfaction: trust in democratic institutions, levels of ideological polarization, and the quality of relations between the mayor, opposition parties, and the local council.
• Management capacities of mayors: the administrative expertise of local governments, through surveys of the mayors themselves.

Secondary data points will also be monitored: efficiency of public procurement processes, corruption indicators, and municipalities' capacity to generate their own revenue.