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Caste, Corruption And Political Competition In India

Author

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  • Avidit Acharya

    (Departments of Political Science and Economics,University of Rochester, Harkness 327, Rochester NY 14627-0146)

  • John E. Roemer

    (Departments of Political Science and Economics,Yale University, PO Box 208301, New Haven CT 06520-8301)

  • Rohini Somanathan

    (Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India)

Abstract

Voters in India are often perceived as being biased in favor of parties that claim to represent their caste. We incorporate this caste bias into voter preferences and examine its influence on the distributive policies and corruption practices of the two major political parties in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.). We begin with a simple two-party, two-caste model to show that caste bias causes political parties to diverge in their policy platforms and has ambiguous e ects on corruption. We then develop the model to make it correspond more closely to political reality by incorporating class-based redis- tributive policies. We use survey data from U.P. that we collected in 2008-2009 to calibrate voter preferences and other model parameters. We then numerically solve for the model's equilibria, and conduct a counterfactual analysis to esti- mate policies in the absence of caste bias. Our model predicts that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which was in power at the time of our survey, would be signicantly less corrupt in a world without caste-based preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Avidit Acharya & John E. Roemer & Rohini Somanathan, 2015. "Caste, Corruption And Political Competition In India," Working papers 241, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:cde:cdewps:241
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    Cited by:

    1. Aparna P Lolayekar & Pranab Mukhopadhyay, 2020. "“Understanding growth convergence in India (1981–2010): Looking beyond the usual suspects”," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(6), pages 1-17, June.
    2. Ticku, Rohit & Venkatesh, Raghul S., 2025. "Economics of majoritarian identity politics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 56-78.
    3. Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Roberto Veneziani, 2017. "Social welfare, justice and distribution," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 415-421, December.
    4. Tushar Bharati, 2020. "Co-ethnic Voters and Candidate Choice by Political Parties: Evidence from India," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 20-05, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    5. Gregorini, Filippo, 2015. "Political geography and income inequalities," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 439-452.
    6. Kartik Misra, 2019. "Accumulation by Dispossession and Electoral Democracies : An Analysis of Land Acquisition for Special Economic Zones in India," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2019-16, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    7. Bharatee Bhusana Dash & J. Stephen Ferris, 2018. "Economic Performance and Electoral Volatility: Testing the Economic Voting Hypothesis on Indian States, 1957–2013," Carleton Economic Papers 18-07, Carleton University, Department of Economics.

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