Clientelistic and Democratic Accountability in Policy Representation: Evidence from Attitudes in India A Research-in-Progress Brown Bag Presentation

Date - Time:  October 19: 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
Location: Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs, APSA, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., Washington, D.C.
To Attend: Seating is limited. RSVP to center@apsanet.org or call (202)483-2512.

Clientelistic and Democratic Accountability in Policy Representation:
Evidence from Attitudes in India

Mary Breeding, Ph.D. Candidate, American University

If a legislator can gain a citizen’s vote by providing a material benefit, does he really have an incentive to represent the interests of his constituents in legislative decision-making? Throughout the developing world today there are many accounts of clientelism in which politicians provide constituents—often poor citizens— with material inducements and access to benefits to gain political support. When politicians provide access or direct benefits to citizens in exchange for their political support, they alter the structure of incentives in their relationship to their constituencies. Clientelist activities can constrain how voters respond to political leaders over time by changing the expectations voters have of political leaders, and more generally of their formally established democratic institutions. My research asks how clientelism alters our conventional understanding of the “rules of the game” for democratic accountability—specifically how political leaders represent the policy preferences of their constituents in legislative decision-making. Using original public opinion data I have collected from surveys of 1700 households and 40 political leaders during one year of field research in Bangalore, India, I assess the influence of clientelism on dyadic policy representation in 12 city municipalities and 8 rural villages in southern India. Results suggest that while clientelism undermines policy representation in formal institutions, it inherently promotes accountability through informal citizen-elite linkages. Cognitive conditions and desires for these linkages are socially constructed and historically defined by citizen’s identities, social inequality, and motivations for protection and subsistence.

Mary Breeding is a Ph.D. candidate at American University and a Neil Kerwin Dissertation Fellow. A portion of her stay at the Center was funded by the Warren E. Miller Fellowship in Electoral Politics. She will stay at the Center through the end of 2007.