Just Rewards? Local Politics and Public Resource Allocation in South India

By Tim Besley, Rohini Pande, V. Rao. 2012

221 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper uses data on elected village councils in South India to examine the political economy of public resource allocation. We find that the pattern of policy-making reflects politicians' self-interest. Elected councillors benefit from improved personal access to public resources. In addition, the head councillor's group identity and residence influences public resource allocation. While electoral incentives do not eliminate politician opportunism, voters appear able to use their electoral clout to gain greater access to public resources.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0ffce03d5854d2a529a57b0e2ebfe13c7251fa8

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Citations in the corpus

Can Informed Voters Enforce Better Governance? Experiments in Low-Income Democracies (2011, background): “Furthermore, a politician’s ethnic identity is often a good predictor of redistributive preferences (Pande, 2004; Besley et al., 2007).”
Clientelism in Indian Villages (2015, background): “3Other work has focused on leader characterisitcs of Gram Panchayats (Besley, Pande, and Rao (2012) and Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004)). political show and poor governance outcomes, without a causal link.”
Traveling Agents: Political Change and Bureaucratic Turnover in India (2008, background): “Di Tella and Fisman (2004), Besley, Pande, and Rao (2007), Ferraz and Finan (2008), and Smart and Sturm (2008) analyze the incentives for elected officials.”
Can Gender Quotas Break Down Negative Stereotypes? Evidence From Changes In Electoral Rules (2010, result): “Similar results emerge from Besley et al. (2004, 2007), Bardhan, Mookherjee and Torrado (2005) and from Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004b).”
Leadership and the voluntary provision of public goods: Field evidence from Bolivia (2015, background): “…in Uganda; Humphreys et al. (2006) study leadership influence on public deliberations about future public resource use in São Tomé and Príncipe; and Besley et al.(2012) analyze political influence in public resource allocation decisions in India. communities, each of which has its own elected…”