Do Actions Speak Louder than Words? Exploring Ideological Preferences in India

• In Event: The Role of Ideology in Public Opinion

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have started to question the prevailing wisdom that political behavior in developing countries today can primarily be explained by patronage politics and ethnic identity. These scholars have instead posited that policy and political parties may play a larger role than has heretofore been acknowledged. In this paper, we study ideology in India, a country at the center of these debates. We survey the preferences of Indian citizens on a number of highly salient historical and contemporary issues. After characterizing ideology in our sample, we ask two central questions. First, does party or policy, or clientelism or ethnicity, better explain individuals’ ideologies? Second, does the way in which we elicit individuals’ preferences have implications for their estimated ideologies? To answer this second question, we compare respondents’ ideal points under two methods: (1) standard survey responses on a Likert scale and (2) a donation game where subjects allocate money to online advertisement campaigns that raise awareness about different issues through informational posters. We find strong support for political party as a driver of individuals’ ideological positions, particularly for those on the political right, and that elicitation method impacts estimates. Our findings underline the need for more research on the ideologies of those in developing country contexts.

Authors

• Rajeshwari Majumdar, New York University

• Nicholas Semi Haas, Aarhus University