Business, Voters, Distributive Politics in Developing Democracies

• In Event: Behavioral Political Economy: Identity

Abstract

Businesses are largely absent from scholarship on distributive politics in poor democracies. Existing research focuses on the relationship between politicians, voters, and strategies such as vote-buying and patronage by party brokers. This paper examines the growth of programs that distribute private goods through government bureaucracies. These programs dwarf the scale of vote-buying by party brokers and reach millions of beneficiaries at the cost of billions of dollars. I draw on an original survey, interviews, and a difference-in-differences analysis of a program that distributed fifteen million televisions in India. I find little evidence in support of the theoretical expectation that consumer goods programs reflect the demands of voters. Rather than directly winning votes, I use data on firms and consumption to demonstrate that private goods enable politicians to forge links with businesses, at the cost of non-concentrated economic sectors. The paper thus bridges research on clientelism, redistribution, and interest groups in developing democracies.

Author

• Gautam Nair, Harvard University