IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v114y2020i4p1316-1334_24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

Author

Listed:
  • DASGUPTA, ADITYA
  • KAPUR, DEVESH

Abstract

Government programs often fail on the ground because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. Prominent explanations for poor implementation emphasize bureaucratic rent-seeking and capture. This article documents a different pathology that we term bureaucratic overload: local bureaucrats are often heavily under-resourced relative to their responsibilities. We advance a two-step theory explaining why bureaucratic overload is detrimental to implementation as well as why politicians under-invest in local bureaucracy, emphasizing a lack of electoral incentives. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries that measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that (i) officials with fewer resources are worse at implementing rural development programs, plausibly because they are unable to allocate enough time to managerial tasks and (ii) fewer resources are provided in administrative units where political responsibility for implementation is less clear. The findings shed light on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.

Suggested Citation

  • Dasgupta, Aditya & Kapur, Devesh, 2020. "The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(4), pages 1316-1334, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:4:p:1316-1334_24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055420000477/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kalaj, Jozefina & Rogger, Daniel & Somani, Ravi, 2022. "Bureaucrat time-use: Evidence from a survey experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    2. Bethany Cooper & Lin Crase & Michael Burton & Dan Rigby & Mohammad Jahangir Alam & Avinash Kishore, 2023. "Policy preferences of experts seeking to raise and stabilise farm incomes in the Eastern Gangetic Plains," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 67(3), pages 323-345, July.
    3. Foa, Roberto Stefan, 2022. "Decentralization, historical state capacity and public goods provision in Post-Soviet Russia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    4. Max Gallien & Vanessa van den Boogaard, 2023. "Formalization and its Discontents: Conceptual Fallacies and Ways Forward," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 54(3), pages 490-513, May.
    5. Ken Ochieng' Opalo, 2021. "Formalizing clientelism in Kenya: From Harambee to the Constituency Development Fund," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-147, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Akshay Mangla, 2022. "Social conflict on the front lines of reform: Institutional activism and girls' education in rural India," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 95-105, February.
    7. Naveen Kumar & Vinitha Varghese, 2022. "Elementary education in India versus China: Guidelines for NEP implementation," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-64, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. De La O, Ana L. & González, Lucas I. & Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca, 2023. "Voluntary audits: Experimental evidence on a new approach to monitoring front-line bureaucrats," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).

    More about this item

    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:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:4:p:1316-1334_24. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.