Partisan Alignment, Insurgency and Security: Evidence from the Indian Red-corridor

Better economic outcomes can prevail when governments at different levels of hierarchy are politically aligned. This often happens because upper level governments are more willing to transfer resources to, and invest in public goods in, aligned constituencies. In this paper we examine whether such political alignment causally affects security. We consider the case of the Naxalite insurgency in India, an issue of significant public safety and security. We focus on close elections and use a regression discontinuity (RD) design, which allows us to examine the causal impact of electing an aligned candidate on security. Our RD estimates show that the election of an aligned candidate leads to a significant reduction in violence. Examining the role of local natural resource activity, i.e., mining, as an underlying mechanism, we find that this negative effect is driven by constituencies close to mining areas. These findings confirm the relevance of political alignment in delivering security within constituencies, and the potential role played by local mining activity.