We summarize and discuss the literature on selection and retention rules for government officials. We focus on ``low-information'' offices -- i.e., offices on which voters tend to have less information compared to national legislative bodies and the top of executive branches of the central government. These are important in many settings because, despite the relatively low amount of media coverage devoted to them, they often have considerable power over specific policy domains (we document this for some cases).

In representative democracies, a variety of rules are employed to select and retain public officials to reflect public preferences over policies. We discuss the literature on selection and retention rules for government officials, focusing on low-information offices. First, we overview the historical origins and the scope of the variation in selection and retention rules. Second, we provide conceptual frameworks for assessing the advantages and disadvantages of direct elections and discuss various factors that influence the functioning of elections. Third, we present empirical regularities. We summarize the baseline effects of the institutional variation and their interaction with factors such as media and compensation. Finally, we discuss outstanding questions on theoretical and empirical fronts, and how the digitization of government information and advances in machine learning can open up new avenues for research.