(iPoster) The Burden of Representation: Bureaucracy, Politics and Development in India

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries & South Asian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Abstract

Why do identical formal institutions produce radically different governance outcomes? Despite sharing uniform bureaucratic structures, administrative procedures, and political systems, some jurisdictions consistently deliver public goods while others fail. While scholars have traditionally examined this puzzle through national and state-level comparisons, the most consequential variations emerge at the local level, where national frameworks for water access, public transportation, or waste management must be translated into functional delivery systems. These local-level divergences provide a unique analytical opportunity to isolate the mechanisms that transform identical formal structures into dramatically different governance outcomes.

This paper reverses the analytical gaze from state-society relationships to interactions within the state itself, revealing how bureaucratic intermediation shapes institutional effectiveness. Much of the literature frames governance as a dichotomy between programmatic policies delivered through impartial bureaucracies and patronage-driven arrangements that reward political supporters. Yet across the Global South, such ideal types rarely materialize. Instead, hybrid conditions prevail—arrangements that combine elements of both programmatic and patronage-based governance. While existing scholarship has explored how non-state intermediaries broker access to discrete, targeted goods, these actors typically fail to foster systematic improvements in complex public services.

Through a structured comparison of Bhopal and Lucknow—two capital cities in India, situated in states with low Human Development Index rankings and limited state capacity—as critical cases, this paper finds that service delivery effectiveness emerges through the critical role of the “missing middle” in bureaucratic institutions. The paper’s evidence reveals that institutional effectiveness emerges not through formal administrative designs or resource endowments, but through bureaucrats’ cultivation of decisional autonomy while maintaining productive engagement with political actors. This manifests through two complementary mechanisms. First, within the state apparatus, mid-level bureaucrats facilitate both vertical integration between elite policymakers and street-level implementers, and horizontal coordination across fragmented administrative agencies. Second, they mediate the political economy of large infrastructure projects, managing complex relationships between political actors seeking patronage opportunities and local contractors adapting to international procurement standards. This dual capacity for internal coordination and political-economic mediation transforms fragmented service delivery into coherent institutional responses.

These findings fundamentally reshape our understanding of institutional development in weakly institutionalized contexts. Rather than requiring complete bureaucratic insulation or wholesale transformation of political systems, effective institutions can emerge through negotiated settlements in which bureaucrats and politicians develop shared stakes in programmatic governance. By challenging the assumed zero-sum relationship between bureaucratic autonomy and political oversight, this paper opens the black box of the state’s internal workings and demonstrates how strategic intermediation can reconcile administrative capacity with political imperatives, even within patronage-dominated systems.

Author

• Bhanu Joshi, Brown University