Which Politicians Respond?

Chapter 9 expands on analyses of the field experiment to explore additional variation in the characteristics of politicians’ responsiveness. First, it investigates the degree to which politicians’ responses reflect state- and individual-level characteristics that may be associated with incentives to cultivate a personal vote. These analyses highlight, in particular, that—consistent with the theoretical discussion in Chapter 4 and existing work on the personal vote—electoral politics play a key role in affecting the degree to which politicians attempt to build their individual reputations via provision of assistance to individual constituents. Chapters 8 and 9 therefore collectively explore the conditions under which constituency service does and does not occur.

Constituency Service in Comparative Perspective

Chapter 11 considers the extent to which we should expect to observe similar dynamics of distributive politics in other parts of the world. It draws on a range of cross-national data to show that the contextual characteristics supporting constituency service—the dynamics of patronage democracy, difficulty in access to public benefits, and partisan allocation of benefits at local levels, accompanied by the presence of high-level representatives with little ability to monitor individual electoral behavior—coexist across a range of democracies around the world. It offers evidence to suggest that high-level politicians in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America also engage in individual-level distribution to build a personal vote, rather than support for their party, and that highly partisan distribution by local operatives may ironically heighten their incentives to assist constituents in a nonpartisan manner. Thus, India is an exemplar of a common trend, rather than a global outlier.

The Provision of Constituency Service

Chapter 3 draws on a field experimental audit of politicians with a near census of Indian state and national legislators to show that, on the whole, politicians do not take indicators of partisanship into account when responding to individual-level requests. Specifically, this national field experiment shows that for India’s high-level politicians, information on electoral preferences does not affect the willingness of representatives to respond to an individual’s request for assistance. In addition, indications of shared ethnicity, e.g., caste, which may be closely tied to political preferences, do not result in preferential treatment. Overall, these findings offer strong evidence that the aid high-level politicians offer to individuals requiring assistance navigating the state is often noncontingent in nature, taking the form of constituency service.

Political Responsiveness in a Patronage Democracy

This chapter draws on accounts from sustained, in-depth shadowing of Indian politicians, as well as large-scale politician surveys, to characterize the nature of politicians’ engagement with their constituents. It highlights the importance these politicians place on making time for citizen interactions and responding to requests—to the extent that high-level politicians spend, on average, a quarter of their time interacting with individual citizens. Critically, the primary focus of these contacts is requests for assistance with the same types of goods and services that are typically also requested of local politicians such as village council presidents, providing preliminary evidence that demands may at least partially originate from individuals’ failure to acquire these benefits at the local level—a topic to which the book later turns. Chapter 2 also shows that the individual benefits directly provided to citizens by high-level politicians are substantial.

When Is Responsiveness Partisan Bias?

Chapter 10 evaluates the conditions under which politicians will allocate benefits in a contingent, versus noncontingent, manner. It shows that citizens living in areas that offered strong support to a politician in the last election are much more likely to receive spending from that politician’s constituency development fund (CDF). Drawing on data from the experiment, it then compares the behavior of politicians spending their CDF funds with responses to the experimental audit of responsiveness. This shows that, while patterns of electoral support predict behavior with regard to partisan targeting, they offer less explanatory value for understanding patterns of constituency service. Thus, the same factors cannot explain both partisan bias and constituency service, and the same individuals who engage in noncontingent individual assistance may also target group-based benefits in a largely partisan manner.

Local Blocking and Appeals for Assistance

Chapter 7 examines the implications of local blocking for citizen strategies to access state services. It shows that non-co-partisans of local officials, who are more likely to be denied services locally, are also expected to make appeals to a larger number of potential intermediaries when attempting to access benefits from the state, than do co-partisans of local officials. It then establishes that high-level politicians are important alternative sources of assistance, particularly when individuals have difficulty accessing public benefits from their local elected official. Importantly, the chapter shows that those individuals who appeal to high-level politicians for assistance are, on average, more successful in acquiring their desired service than those who appeal to local politicians. Thus, local blocking is associated with an increased demand for assistance from high-level politicians.

Clients or Constituents?

Chapter 4 offers a theoretical explanation for why we should expect to see constituency service in patronage democracies, despite existing expectations to the contrary. It discusses in greater detail the book’s argument for why constituency service constitutes a key element of distributive politics, alongside forms of locally brokered clientelism and contingent allocation of group-oriented goods. The chapter elaborates the sources of demand for, and supply of, constituency service in a patronage democracy. It then considers the limitations of more widely studied forms of distributive politics and outlines the ways in which constituency service offers a compelling alternative to politicians for pursuing their desired electoral ends. This discussion suggests a number of empirical implications, laid out in detail at the end of the chapter, which guide the analyses in subsequent chapters.

Introduction

The introduction to the book presents an overview of the puzzle constituency service presents to our understanding of distributive politics in patronage democracies. It then offers an overview of the book’s argument for why citizens demand assistance from their high-level representatives—individuals with substantially large constituencies such that they cannot know most of their voters personally—and why these politicians respond to such requests in a largely nonpartisan and noncontingent manner. The chapter places this constituency service conceptually within nonprogrammatic politics, alongside more well-studied forms of allocation: clientelism and partisan bias. It then offers an outline of the book’s contents and contributions, including a summary of the data sources used throughout the text.

Conclusion

Chapter 12 addresses the broader implications of the book’s findings for our view of representative democracy in many parts of the world. It posits that the form of representation present in these contexts is characterized by “constrained accountability.” High-level politicians in patronage democracies are substantially more accountable to their individual constituents than posited in existing literature. However, this accountability remains limited, in multiple ways outlined in the chapter. In providing this form of limited accountability, constituency service also serves to support the functioning of democracy in patronage contexts. While the targeted nature of clientelist and partisan distribution excludes a large portion of voters from the significant resources of the state, constituency service by high-level politicians offers those same voters a potential resource for accessing benefits. This responsiveness makes the state’s resources available to a much wider swath of voters than would otherwise be the case and, in doing so, contributes to the functioning, and persistence, of patronage democracy.

Partisanship, the Personal Vote, and Constituency Service

Chapter 8 tests observable implications of the book’s theory on constituency service’s supply, using the field experiment introduced in Chapter 3 to assess politicians’ motivations to respond to petitions. It shows that indicators of a personal vote—that the petitioner has voted for the politician in the past—can have a small positive effect on the quality of a politician’s response, if not the baseline response rate. This chapter also investigates whether information on local blocking affects politicians’ willingness to respond. It shows that, in states with a long history of local elections, politicians interpret information about a failure to receive assistance locally as an indicator of local partisan blocking and, combined with information on electoral history, an indication that the petitioner is a supporter or persuadable voter. Consistent with qualitative evidence from politician shadowing, this experimental evidence substantiates the argument that politicians use constituency service to reach potential supporters.