Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T20:14:41.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Development or Rent Seeking? How Political Influence Shapes Public Works Provision in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2019

Anjali Thomas
Anjali Thomas*
Affiliation:
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology
*
*Corresponding author: Email: athomas424@gatech.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do politicians with influence over public works programs balance their incentives to gain electoral support with their proclivities for rent seeking? This article argues that government elites in parliamentary systems manage this trade-off by concentrating rent-seeking opportunities in their own hands while facilitating efficient public goods provision in the constituencies of their more junior partisan colleagues. Analyses using fine-grained data on road construction in India based on a variety of causal inference strategies support the argument. While ruling party legislators showed higher levels of road provision in their constituencies regardless of ministerial status, road projects in ministers’ constituencies showed higher levels of rent seeking than those in the constituencies of other ruling party legislators. Moreover, consistent with the mechanism, ruling party legislators’ diminished access to rent-seeking opportunities appears to be largely driven by the influence of co-partisan ministers. The findings illuminate how politicized distribution can sometimes mitigate inefficiencies in infrastructure provision.

Keywords

public goodscorruptioninfrastructureIndia
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 253 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angrist, JD Pischke, JS (2009) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asher, S Novosad, P (2016) Market access and structural transformation: Evidence from rural roads in India. Unpublished Manuscript, Dartmouth College.Google Scholar
Asher, S Novosad, P (2017) Politics and local economic growth: Evidence from India. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9 (1), 229–273.Google Scholar
Anjali, Thomas Bohlken (2018) “Development or Rent-Seeking? How Political Influence Shapes Public Works Provision in India”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4YXPHO, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:qu6DoxCKw6mZAaDVxxNZrQ==[fileUNF]Google Scholar
Bhavnani, R Lee, A (2018) Local embeddedness and bureaucratic performance: Evidence from India. Journal of Politics 80 (1), 71–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, TC, Hidalgo, FD Richardson, NP (2014) The spoils of victory: campaign donations and government contracts in Brazil. The Journal of Politics 76 (2), 415–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BuenodeMesquita, B et al. (2003) The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bussell, J (2012) Corruption and Reform in India: Public Services in the Digital Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cain, B, Ferejohn, J Fiorina, M (1984) The constituency service basis of the personal vote for U.S. representatives and British members of parliament. American Political Science Review 78 (1), 110–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, S, Cattaneo, M Titiunik, R (2015) Optimal data-driven regression discontinuity plots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 110 (512), 1753–1769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, J Shugart, M (1995) Incentives to cultivate a personal vote. Electoral Studies, 14 (4), 417–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caughey, D Sekhon, JS (2011) Elections and the regression discontinuity design: lessons from close U.S. house races, 1942–2008. Political Analysis 19 (4), 385–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chhibber, PK Nooruddin, I (2004) Do party systems count? The number of partiesand government performance in the Indian states. Comparative Political Studies 37 (2), 152–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denemark, D (2000) Partisan pork barrel in parliamentary systems: Australian constituency-level grants. The Journal of Politics 62 (3), 896–915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dinkelman, T (2011) The effects of rural electrification on employment: new evidence from South Africa. American Economic Review, 101 (7), 3078–3108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunning, T Nilekani, J (2013) Ethnic quotas and political mobilization: caste, parties, and distribution in Indian village councils. American Political Science Review 107 (1), 35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eggers, AC et al. (2015) On the validity of the regression discontinuity design for estimating electoral effects: New evidence from over 40,000 close races. American Journal of Political Science 59 (1), 259–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, JD (1999) Electoral accountability and the control of politicians: selecting good types versus sanctioning poor performance. In Przeworski A, Stokes S and Manin B (eds), Democracy, Accountability and Representation. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisman, R, Schulz, F Vig, V (2014) The private returns to public office. Journal of Political Economy 122 (4), 806–862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerring, J Thacker, S (2004) Political institutions and corruption: the role of unitarism and parliamentarism. British Journal of Political Science 34 (2), 295–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golden, M Min, B (2013) Distributive politics around the world. Annual Review of Political Science 16 (1), 73–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golden, MA Picci, L (2005) Proposal for a new measure of corruption, illustrated with Italian data. Economics and Politics 17 (1), 37–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gulzar, S Pasquale, B (2017) Politicians, bureaucrats, and development: evidence from India. American Political Science Review, 111 (1), 162–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, R (2015) Attribution and accountability: voting for roads in Ghana. World Politics, 67 (4), 656–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, A Malhotra, N (2013) Retrospective voting reconsidered. Annual Review of Political Science 16, 285–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imbens, G Lemieux, T (2008) Regression discontinuity designs: a guide to practice. Journal of Econometrics 142 (2), 615–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyer, L Mani, A (2012) Traveling agents: political change and bureaucratic turnover in India. Review of Economics and Statistics 94 (3), 723–739.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapur, D Vaishnav, M (2011) Quid pro quo: builders, politicians, and election finance in India. Center for Global Development, Working Paper 276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keefer, P Khemani, S (2009) When do legislators pass on pork? The role of parties in determining legislator effort. American Political Science Review 103 (1), 99–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khemani, S (2002) Khemani, stuti, federal politics and budget deficits: evidence from the states of India. Policy Research Working Paper No. 2915. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, H Wilkinson, SI (Eds) (2007) Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunicova, J Rose-Ackerman, S (2005) Electoral rules and constitutional structures as constraints on corruption. British Journal of Political Science 35 (4), 573–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, D Baum, M (2001) The invisible hand of democracy: political control and the provision of public services. Comparative Political Studies 34, 587–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, DS (2008) Randomized experiments from non-random selection in US House elections. Journal of Econometrics 142 (2), 675–697.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, DS Lemieux, T (2010) Regression discontinuity designs in economics. Journal of Economic Literature 48 (2), 281–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehne, J, Shapiro, J Eynde, OV (2018) Building connections: political corruption and road construction in India. Journal of Development Economics 131, 62–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Faupel, S et al. (2016) Can electronic procurement improve infrastructure provision? Evidence from public works in India and Indonesia. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8 (3), 258–283.Google Scholar
Min, B (2015) Power and the Vote: Elections and Electricity in the Developing World. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nooruddin, I Chhibber, P (2008) Unstable politics unstable politics: fiscal space and electoral volatility in the Indian states. Comparative Political Studies 41 (8), 1069–1091.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, T Tabellini, G (2005) The Economic Effects of Constitutions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rose-Ackerman, S (1999) Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, DJ (2002) Pork barreling is not credit claiming or advertising: Campaign finance and the sources of the personal vote in Brazil. The Journal of Politics 64 (3), 845–863.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shugart, M Carey, J (1992) Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stasavage, D (2005) Democracy and education spending in Africa. American Journal of Political Science 49 (2), 343–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, S et al. (2013) Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Bohlken A (2018) Development or Rent-Seeking? How Political Influence Shapes Public Works Provision in India, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4YXPHO, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:qu6DoxCKw6mZAaDVxxNZrQ== [fileUNF]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uppal, Y (2009) The disadvantaged incumbents: estimating incumbency effects in Indian state legislatures. Public Choice 138 (1), 9–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wade, R (1982) The system of administrative and political corruption: canal irrigation in South India. Journal of Development Studies 18 (3), 302–304.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Bohlken Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/4YXPHO
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Bohlken supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Bohlken supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.4 MB