Criminal Politicians and Socioeconomic Development: Evidence from Rural India

Although it seems intuitively clear that candidate quality provides a critical pillar of democratic governance, the consequences of electing low-quality politicians remain unclear. Combining census data and election results, we conduct a regression discontinuity analysis to examine the socioeconomic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStudies in comparative international development Vol. 54; no. 4; pp. 501 - 527
Main Authors Cheng, Chao-Yo, Urpelainen, Johannes
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.12.2019
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Analysis
Candidates
Censuses
Crime
Data quality
Discontinuity
Election results
Elections
Electrification
Governance
Infrastructure (Economics)
Legislators
Political activity
Political aspects
Political campaigns
Political economy
Politicians
Poverty
Power
Regression analysis
Rent-seeking
Rural areas
Rural communities
Rural development
Social Sciences
Socioeconomic development
State elections
India
Political economy of development
Elections
Candidate quality
Regression discontinuity design
India
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Summary:Although it seems intuitively clear that candidate quality provides a critical pillar of democratic governance, the consequences of electing low-quality politicians remain unclear. Combining census data and election results, we conduct a regression discontinuity analysis to examine the socioeconomic effects of criminal politicians in India. We find that the election of state legislators with criminal charges can exacerbate household poverty in a village as household electrification and literacy rates both decrease when criminal candidates win close elections against non-criminal ones. In contrast, the presence of criminal politicians does not have a conclusive negative effect on the supply of local infrastructures, such as paved roads and power grids. These results highlight the importance of differentiating between different types of policy outcomes. Rent-seeking politicians will engage in local infrastructural projects, but they may pay little attention to these projects’ contribution to poverty reduction.
ISSN:0039-3606
1936-6167
DOI:10.1007/s12116-019-09290-5