Does Political Reservation Affect Voting Behavior? Empirical Evidence from India

Yuko Mori and Takashi Kurosaki

No 17, PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: Using microdata from the National Election Study of the 2004 parliamentary elections in India, we empirically examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged castes and tribes on voting behavior. We find that in a reserved constituency, where only members of the disadvantaged castes can stand for election, voters of the disadvantaged castes are encouraged to vote. On the other hand, the system of constituency reservation does not have any impact on the turnout of voters belonging to other groups, including relatively upper caste voters. These voters, however, tend to change political party to vote for in reserved constituencies. These findings imply that there is a general acceptance of political reservation in the Indian electoral system.

Keywords: political reservation; voter turnout; castes; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2011-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/22182/No17-dp.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hit:primdp:17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Digital Resources Section, Hitotsubashi University Library ().