Does the creation of elected councils in a traditional society improve governance quality? Using data from a field experiment conducted across 500 villages in Afghanistan, we show that this institutional change improves governance, as proxied by whether food aid distributed by local leaders reaches vulnerable villagers. However, this happens only if the entity responsible for performing the public service is well-defined. If the division of responsibilities between newly created elected councils and traditional leaders is ambiguous, the presence of elected councils worsens governance quality due to the dilution of institutional accountability.