Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption

Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande

No 6381, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines how increased voter ethnicization, defined as a greater preference for the party representing one's ethnic group, affects politician quality. If politics is characterized by incomplete policy commitment, then ethnicization reduces average winner quality for the pro-majority party with the opposite true for the minority party. The effect increases with greater numerical dominance of the majority (and so social homogeneity). Empirical evidence from a survey on politician corruption that we conducted in North India is remarkably consistent with our theoretical predictions.

Keywords: Corruption; Ethnic voting; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (78)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption (2007)
Working Paper: Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption (2007)
Working Paper: Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption (2007)
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