POLITICAL PARTICIPATION, CLIENTELISM AND TARGETING OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS: Results from a Rural Household Survey in West Bengal, India

This paper provides evidence concerning political participation (turnout, awareness, attendance at meetings, campaign involvement, voting) and its relation to local governance (targeting of public services) in a developing country, based on a rural household survey in West Bengal, India. We find that reported participation rates varied remarkably little with socio-economic status, with the exception of education and immigrant status. Within villages, benefits disbursed by local governments displayed no relation to wealth, caste, education, gender or political affiliations. In contrast, allocation of benefits across villages by higherlevel governments displayed bias against the poor; these biases were larger in villages with more unequal landownership and lower participation rates in village meetings. Political support among voters for the dominant Left party was positively correlated with receipt of recurring benefits and help provided by local governments in times of personal need, but not long-term one-time benefits or local public goods provided. 1 We thank MacArthur Foundation, the Indian Statistical Institute and WIDER for funding this research, to seminar participants at Center for Studies in Social Science, Kolkata and Institute for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University for useful comments, and Jean-Paul Faguet and an anonymous referee for expositional suggestions. 2 Department of Economics, University of California 3 Economics Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. 4 Department of Economics, Boston University. 5 Economics Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.