State Capacity at the Front Lines: Evidence from Land Administration in India

• In Event: The Political Economy of Service Delivery in Developing Democracies

Abstract

What explains the varying abilities of states to effectively administer their territories? This paper draws lessons from a nationwide survey of local land administrators in India known as Tehsildars. Tehsildars manage local land records, resolve land disputes, and enforce land regulation, among other responsibilities, playing a critical role in the frontline enforcement of property rights and administration of land/territory by the state. Drawing on the survey data, we examine three hypotheses about sources of territorial state capacity: i) institutional legacies: is responsiveness to citizens and record-keeping worse in regions that have failed to modernize the colonial-era institutional architecture of land administration? ii) rent-seeking: using survey experiments we elicit preferences over postings to test whether the market value of land creates opportunities for corruption; iii) bureaucratic autonomy: is bureaucratic performance better in regions where officials are insulated from special interest groups, including politicians, criminal interests, and real estate developers? Together, we explore the role of antiquated institutional design, rent-seeking, and pressure from special interests as sources of weak territorial state capacity at the front lines.

Authors

• Aditya Dasgupta, University of California, Merced

• Devesh Kapur, Johns Hopkins SAIS

• Anustubh Agnihotri, University of California, Berkeley