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How Do Voters Respond to Welfare vis-à-vis Public Good Programs? An Empirical Test for Clientelism

Author

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

Abstract

This paper examines allocation of benefits under local government programs in West Bengal, India to isolate patterns consistent with political clientelism. Using household survey data, we find that voters respond positively to private welfare benefits but not to local public good programs, while reporting having benefited from both. Consistent with the voting patterns, shocks to electoral competition induced by exogenous redistricting of villages resulted in upper-tier governments manipulating allocations across local governments only for welfare programs. Through the lens of a hierarchical budgeting model, we argue that these results provide credible evidence of the presence of clientelism rather than programmatic politics, and how this distorts the allocation of government programs both within and across villages.

Suggested Citation

  • Pranab Bardhan & Sandip Mitra & Dilip Mookherjee & Anusha Nath, 2020. "How Do Voters Respond to Welfare vis-à-vis Public Good Programs? An Empirical Test for Clientelism," Staff Report 605, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:88338
    DOI: 10.21034/sr.605
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Welfare programs; Public goods; Clientelism; Voting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

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