Incumbency, Parties, and Legislatures: Theory and Evidence from India
نویسنده
چکیده
Incumbent legislators in developing countries are often found to not possess an electoral advantage relative to challengers. This paper traces this effect to the balance of power between legislators and party leaders, and formal and informal constraints on legislators’ ability to influence policy and stake positions. This theory is tested on a dataset of Indian national elections since 1977, using a regression discontinuity design to measure the effects of incumbency. The spread of legal restrictions on free voting is associated with a strong negative trend in incumbency effects. Corruption appears have little effect on incumbency disadvantage, while poverty has a weak effect. The results imply that the electoral effects of political office are conditional on the overall structure of the political system.
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