How Do Voters Respond to Welfare Vis-a-Vis Public Good Programs? Theory and Evidence of Political Clientelism

Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee and Anusha Nath

No 32158, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using rural household survey data from West Bengal, we find that voters respond positively to excludable government welfare benefits but not to local public good programs, while reporting having benefited from both. Consistent with these voting patterns, shocks to electoral competition induced by exogenous redistricting of villages resulted in upper-tier governments manipulating allocations across local governments only for excludable benefit programs. Using a hierarchical budgeting model, we argue these results provide credible evidence of the presence of clientelism rather than programmatic politics.

JEL-codes: H40 H75 H76 O10 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: DEV POL
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Published as Pranab Bardhan & Sandip Mitra & Dilip Mookherjee & Anusha Nath, 2024. "How do voters respond to welfare vis‐à‐vis public good programs? Theory and evidence of political clientelism," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), pages 655-697, July.

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