Courting Votes Without Party Agents: Evidence from Rural India

• In Event: Democracy, Political Networks and Distributive Politics in India

Abstract

In many emerging democracies, political elites rely on local brokers to influence voters. In this article, we examine the extent to which these actors are partisan and advance an explanation for why they may not be. Wherever ideology matters less than distributive politics, we argue that the strength of partisan networks should coevolve with levels of political competition. When competition is high, local brokers prefer hedging between party networks. To test our argument, we rely on a cross-referencing survey in Bihar (India), a state with high levels of political competition. Analyses suggest that many electoral brokers are not party agents; besides, co-partisanship does not strongly predict the connections between voters and brokers. A second set of results suggests that local levels of partisanship among brokers vary with levels of competitiveness. This confirms the link between competitiveness and partisanship and suggests that partisan networks are difficult to maintain when competition increases.

Authors

• Simon Chauchard, Columbia University

• Neelanjan Sircar, University of Pennsylvania