Random Acts of Representative Democracy in the Orissa Panchayati Raj: A Test for Development Project and Electoral Empowerment Effects of Political Office Reservations for Women and Underrepresented Minorities
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This papers leverages the randomization, popularized by “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence From A Randomized Policy Experiment in India” (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004a,) of reservations for women and underrepresented minorities in India’s Panchayati Raj system of hierarchical government bodies to identify their effects in Orissa, one of the country’s poorest states. It identifies interelectoral effects of reservations on group officeholding, project output and expenditure, and project type composition using a dataset of 710,189 government-sponsored development projects of 29 types that span 50,972 villages and the past nine financial years as well as two elections’ officeholder genders, reservations, and reelection statuses. The effect of reservations for women on their representation in unreserved seats is minimal, and underrepresented minority reelection rates are abysmal absent reservations. Effects on project expenditure and count are small though perhaps inconsistently present. Effects on project type composition mostly lack statistical and economic significance, (reservations for women,) or otherwise are of borderline economic significance but inconsistent across elections and administrative levels, (reservations for minorities.) Thus the case of Orissa may provide countervailing evidence to recent findings in the literature of reservations increasing disenfranchised groups’ electoral prospects as well as government project quantity, expenditure, or representativeness.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2010 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Bruno, William | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Mahajan, Aprajit | |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
| Subject | Stanford Department of Economics |
|---|---|
| Subject | Panchayati Raj |
| Subject | reservations |
| Subject | election |
| Subject | India |
| Subject | Orissa |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/gk196jg7899 |
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Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Bruno, William. (2010). Random Acts of Representative Democracy in the Orissa Panchayati Raj: A Test for Development Project and Electoral Empowerment Effects of Political Office Reservations for Women and Underrepresented Minorities . Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/gk196jg7899
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses
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