Publications
Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor? Identifying the Distributive Preferences of Village Politicians in India (with Neelanjan Sircar)
April 2024 Electoral Studies
We investigate the distributive preferences of elected leaders in local democracies, who are tasked with “everyday assistance” and personally know their constituents. In this setting, economic distribution is driven more by leader preferences and less by efficiency concerns, as in the lower information setting typically described in the literature. In local democracy, we argue voters can explicitly select leaders who prefer to distribute to a broad group of supporters, who further conform to norms of targeting the most needy among supporters. In this article, we develop a novel behavioral measure that isolates leaders’ distributive preferences from direct electoral benefit, which we implement in villages across the Indian state of Rajasthan. We find elected leaders prefer to distribute 94% more to supporters and 17% more to supporters one standard deviation below the mean village wealth. This suggests local elections are consistent with significant distribution to the poor, albeit with political biases.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor?”
Rethinking India and the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World
(With Adam Auerbach, Jennifer Bussell, Francesca Jensenius, Gareth Nellis, Neelanjan Sircar, Pavithra Suryanarayan, Tariq Thachil, Milan Vaishnav, Rahul Verma and Adam Ziegfeld)
March 2021, Perspectives on Politics
In the study of electoral politics and political behavior, India is often considered to be an exemplar of the centrality of contingency in distributive politics, the role of ethnicity in shaping political behavior, and the organizational weakness of political parties. Whereas these axioms do have some basis, the massive changes in political practices, the vast variation in political patterns, and the burgeoning literature on subnational dynamics in India mean that such generalizations are no longer tenable. The purpose of this article is to consider new and emerging research on India that compels us to rethink the contention that India neatly fits the prevailing wisdom in the comparative politics literature. Our objective is to elucidate how these more nuanced insights about Indian politics can improve our understanding of electoral behavior both across and within other countries, allowing us to question core assumptions in theories of comparative politics.
The Discerning Voter: Partisan Alignment and Local Distribution Under Multi-Level Governance
February 2020, Party Politics
What shapes voters’ expectations of receiving private anti-poverty benefits and local public goods in decentralized systems where discretion over the allocation of different types of government resources is held at different tiers of government? Existing models of instrumental voting in patronage-based democracies suggests that voters’ expectations are shaped by shared ethnic or partisan identities with party leaders or candidates or a record of past distribution. This work, however, does not consider the nuanced calculations that voters make in systems where different types of benefits are controlled by different tiers of government. In this article, I show that voters in rural India weigh the impact of co-partisan ties with the local leader on distribution differently where discretion over targeting varies between the local and state levels of government. I test my argument with a unique vignette survey experiment in which I randomize the partisan affiliation of real village council politicians, whom voters identify as a prominent Congress/BJP leader in their locality. Consistent with the argument, voters are more likely to anticipate private benefits when the sarpanch is a co-partisan; the impact of co-partisanship on access to state funds for local public goods is conditioned on whether the sarpanch belongs to the ruling party at the state level.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “How Savvy is the Rural Indian Voter?”
Do Local Leaders Know Their Voters? A Test of Guessability in India
November 2019, Electoral Studies
Prominent theories of clientelism—the exchange of benefits for political support—depend on the assumption that brokers possess detailed information on voters’ political preferences prior to targeting. This article provides the first direct test of this assumption. It develops a unique survey measure, guessability, which gauges the ability of local brokers to correctly identify the partisan preferences of voters in their locality. It then develops a way to estimate brokers’ added informational value by comparing brokers’ performance against low-information benchmarks that capture guessability rates that can feasibly be achieved by outsiders. Original data from a cross-referenced survey of voters and elected village leaders across 96 village councils in Rajasthan, India indicate that while an important category of brokers out-perform low-information benchmarks overall or with respect to non-co-partisans. This has important implications for the feasibility of core and swing targeting strategies in India and beyond.
See a synopsis of the article in the Hindu Business Line here: “Can Benefits be Tied to the Vote?”
Media Writing
“Sarpanches and Supporters: Everydays Responsiveness in Rural India. 30 September 2024.
“How Savvy is the Rural Indian Voter?” Hindu Business Line, 31 January 2018.
“Do Local Leaders Prioritize the Poor?” Hindu Business Line, 14 December 2015.
“Can Benefits be Tied to the Vote?” Hindu Business Line, 14 January 2014.
Works in Progress
Does Increasing Competition Increase Pro-Poor Responsiveness? Distributive Preferences of Partisan Brokers in Mexico (With Tesalia Rizzo, UC Merced). Do local partisan brokers change their distributive preferences when faced with competition from non-partisan programmatic actors? This paper measures local partisan intermediaries’ distributive preferences in 112 villages embedded in a larger field experiment conducted in Mexico that introduced non-partisan facilitators trained to inform and assist citizens in formally requesting government resources, a task that usually falls to a partisan intermediary. Using a conjoint experiment, we find that brokers in villages with a facilitator are 22% more likely to prefer to target the poorest category of voters than those in the control group. We interpret this as a result of increased competition for clients specifically in a context where the alternative provider of assistance is programmatic. This has important implications for understanding the potential of low-cost programmatic interventions to increase responsiveness to the poor by clientelistic actors. Manuscript available upon request.
Can Local Representatives Deliver? Comparing Targeting and Policy Preferences Between Local Bureaucrats and Local Representatives in Rural India (with Manasi Rao, Yale University). India’s 73rd amendment decentralized substantial powers over the implementation of national policies to local governments; however, carrying out constituents’ demands often requires cooperation from un-elected bureaucrats. This project examines the relationship between local representatives (village council presidents) and unelected local bureaucrats (panchayat secretaries). Along with observational survey data examining the relationship between local bureaucrats and village council presidents, we include conjoint experiments that measure the targeting preferences and policy preferences of both local actors. This project provides insights on democratic decentralization and the role that un-elected local actors play in mediating democratic responsiveness. Pre-Analysis Plan Available upon request.
Misinformation in Local Elections in the United States: Consequences and Remedies. Misinformation is widespread in political campaigns and elections. While concerns about the effects of misinformation on representation and accountability have focused on national political targets (e.g., Biden, Trump), little is known about the effects of misinformation on local elections where voters have little knowledge of many of the candidates. This project will evaluate the effects of misinformation of various types targeting local and national politicians on perceptions of political candidates, interest in local politics, and vote intentions. Research proposal available on request.
Future Research
How Do Voters Choose Their Leaders in Local Elections in Rural India? Millions of local politicians run for office in India’s local governance system, however, little is known about how voters choose among candidates in these elections or what their preferences are. I argue that in high-information local elections — where voters and leaders occupy the same dense social networks — voters select leaders on reputation for following village social norms toward serving the most vulnerable as well as on expectations of responsiveness and ability to deliver development for the village. This project will include qualitative research on local social norms (moral economies); voter surveys and experiments that measure the candidate traits voters’ prefer; and a survey of sarpanches and runners up that will measure the differences between winners and losers on these traits. Together this project will be the first comprehensive examination of political behavior in sarpanch elections in India. The project is currently at the fundraising stage.
Does Climate Change Policy Have Political Benefits? Understanding policy feedback from implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States (with Tom Orgazalek). The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 resulted in a large influx of spending on green industries, jobs, and infrastructure. To what extent do voters in localities that saw benefits from this policy reward the governing party for these benefits? What aspects of this policy are most likely to resonate with voters in minority-majority areas and in areas traditionally less concerned about climate change? This project using qualitative interviews and surveys to answer these questions in collaboration with Community Change, a national non-profit organization. Research proposal available upon request.
What Do Local Representatives in India Know About Climate Change? Elected local representatives are on the front lines of the government response to climate change. To what extent do they understand the risks of climate change and how to respond to it with the programs and authority they possess? In this article, I examine village council presidents’ knowledge of the main risks of climate change for rural citizens in India and how they respond to these challenges in practice using a phone survey fielded to sarpanches across the state of Rajasthan.