Date of Award

Fall 2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Wilkinson, Steven

Abstract

This dissertation presents three essays on distributive politics in India: 1) Governments distribute a variety of benefits to win votes. Why do some benefits have greater electoral impact than others? This paper provides descriptive evidence that a $10 cooking gas cylinder and $2000 house have comparable electoral impact in India. This motivates a typology in which distributive decisions can be organized on two dimensions: the cost of a benefit, and how it is distributed. Politicians face two key trade-offs: first, given a finite budget, they can widely distribute a cheap benefit or give an expensive benefit to fewer voters; and second, they can either distribute the benefit through brokers or as a rule based, non-contingent, direct transfer. Clientelism skews distribution in favor of party loyalists but provides effective credit claiming. Programmatic distribution provides better targeting but worse credit claiming. Using data from India's National Election Studies, I show that there is political targeting of the cooking gas cylinder but not the house. Cooking gas cylinder recipients are also more likely to be contacted by the ruling party broker before elections but not house recipients. The evidence suggests that party elites pursue a mixed strategy of distribution: relying on brokers to deliver cheap benefits and government programs to deliver expensive benefits. Brokers make up for the value difference in benefits through effective canvassing. 2) Can an expensive material benefit, delivered programmatically to voters outside the ruling party's ethnic core, win support for the benefit-giving party, and undercut the distributive salience of ethnicity? The literature says that material benefits can compensate for ethnic or ideological disutility, and that socioeconomic targeting can weaken beliefs about co-ethnic politicians being more likely to deliver benefits to the voter. I find that a large-scale, rural housing program in India generates support for the benefit-giving party among ethnically opposed voters and even those that do not receive the benefit. Beneficiaries feel gratitude, while non-beneficiaries report that many people like them have benefited from the program. There is no impact on the distributive salience of ethnicity. Beneficiaries recognize that the ruling party has done something for them, and are aware of the programmatic features of distribution. Yet, ethnic considerations predominantly shape distributive beliefs about politicians in a behavioral game. This finding has implications for ethnically diverse, developing democracies where programmatic competition is seen as an antidote to ethnic politics. Even an expensive benefit like a house, delivered programmatically, does little to reduce the distributive salience of ethnicity. 3) Governments in developing countries spend considerable money distributing material benefits to their citizens. Some of these benefits are distributed through brokers, others as rule based, non-contingent, direct transfers. Governments are less likely to adopt programmatic distribution if voters do not prioritize efficient implementation, namely less leakage and more accurate targeting. Since rule based, non-contingent, direct transfers can end up benefiting out-partisans and ethnic out-groups, supporters of the ruling party should not punish their party for benefiting non-supporters. To assess whether voter behavior incentivizes programmatic distribution, I conduct two pre-registered studies in India, an online survey experiment and a telephone-based survey experiment fielded in 12 different languages. Indian voters reward good distributive performance but are more focused on outcomes than efficient implementation. They place a modest premium on distributive efficiency. Strikingly, ruling party supporters do not punish their party for benefiting ethnic out-groups. These findings suggest there are strong incentives for politicians to deliver benefits, though not entirely as rule-based, non-contingent direct transfers.

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