How Do Voters Respond to Welfare Vis-a-Vis Public Good Programs? Theory and Evidence of Political Clientelism / Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Anusha Nath.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bardhan, Pranab.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mitra, Sandip.

Mookherjee, Dilip.

Nath, Anusha.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w32158.

NBER working paper series no. w32158

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2024.

Summary:

Using rural household survey data from West Bengal, we find that voters respond positively to excludable government welfare benefits but not to local public good programs, while reporting having benefited from both. Consistent with these voting patterns, shocks to electoral competition induced by exogenous redistricting of villages resulted in upper-tier governments manipulating allocations across local governments only for excludable benefit programs. Using a hierarchical budgeting model, we argue these results provide credible evidence of the presence of clientelism rather than programmatic politics.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2024.