IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/quante/v15y2024i3p655-697.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How do voters respond to welfare vis‐à‐vis public good programs? Theory and evidence of political clientelism

Author

Listed:
  • Pranab Bardhan
  • Sandip Mitra
  • Dilip Mookherjee
  • Anusha Nath

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Pranab Bardhan & Sandip Mitra & Dilip Mookherjee & Anusha Nath, 2024. "How do voters respond to welfare vis‐à‐vis public good programs? Theory and evidence of political clientelism," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), pages 655-697, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:quante:v:15:y:2024:i:3:p:655-697
    DOI: 10.3982/QE2315
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3982/QE2315
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3982/QE2315?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:quante:v:15:y:2024:i:3:p:655-697. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.