Community Claims and Political Responsiveness in Urban India

• In Event: Public Goods Provision in Urban Areas: Evidence from South Asian Cities

Abstract

Why are politicians responsive to the claims of some communities in their constituencies and not others? Studies of distributive politics have established that political brokers frequently petition the state for public services on behalf of the communities in which they reside and operate. Yet, scholars have yet to systematically examine how politicians prioritize among the many claims they receive from brokers, and by extension the communities for which the latter speak. This paper examines the distributive preferences of politicians when evaluating neighborhood-based claims, made by brokers. To examine the factors shaping these decisions, we conducted a novel petition experiment with 201 politicians across two north Indian cities. Politicians in urban India are bombarded with petitions for public services, forcing them to make daily decisions over how and where to allocate scarce resources. Our experiment analytically differentiates the social and political characteristics of the broker making the claim (in our study, slum leaders) from the larger demographic and political characteristics of that broker’s neighborhood (slum settlement). We further draw on original survey data across 111 slums in our two study cities to assess the fit between our experimental findings and observational outcomes in local development.

Authors

• Tariq Thachil, Vanderbilt University

• Adam Michael Auerbach, American University-SIS