Topic: Who Becomes a Local Politician? Evidence from Rural India

Presenter: Apurva Bamezai

Session Details: Can local democracy in areas of weak state capacity attract competent leaders while simultaneously ensuring adequate representation of disadvantaged groups? Matching census data of 95 million rural residents and nearly 1 million local politicians from Bihar, we uncover the following facts about politicians’ competence and representativeness. First, absent political quotas, Bihar’s local electoral system comprises a “partially exclusive meritocracy”. Politicians are from more elite backgrounds, but among the elites, the more educated contest and win. Our results suggest a trade-off between competence and representativeness, with women, members of disadvantaged castes, lower ranked candidates and lower tiers of government demonstrating less positive selection and less elite backgrounds. Moreover, while selection patterns vary by various village characteristics such as inequality and caste heterogeneity, these do not fundamentally change the “partially exclusive meritocracy” characterisation. Subsequently, we argue that policy intervention can meaningfully influence selection. Taken together, our findings highlight the significance of studying the fiercely competitive landscape of local democracy in understanding the causes and consequences of political selection.

This session will be a workshop and participants are required to read the paper beforehand. Please find the paper we will be discussing at the link below. 

For more information, reach out to pdri-devlab@sas.upenn.edu