Politics as Usual? Local Democracy and Public Resource Allocation in South India

This paper uses data on elected village councils in South India to examine the politics of public resource allocation. We stress two facets of the political process –access to political authority, and the use of political power. We …nd compelling evidence that the pattern of policy re‡ects politicians’self-interest. Further, the extent and type of political opportunism in resource allocation is responsive to the design of political institutions. Thus, local democracy in India displays all the hallmarks of “politics as usual”. We thank Lupin Rahman, Radu Ban, Siddharth Sharma and Jillian Waid for research assistance, and IMRB sta¤ for conducting the survey. Useful comments have been received from seminar audiences at Oxford and at a meeting of the CIFAR Institutions, Organizations and Growth program. We are grateful to the World Bank’s Research Committee and the South Asia Rural Development Unit for …nancial support. The opinions in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily re‡ect the points of view of the World Bank or its member countries.