POLITICAL INFLUENCE AND

VOTER PREFERENCES: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA AND PAKISTAN

01 June 2016 1

Jacob N. Shapiro

Princeton University

June 1, 2016 India Pakistan

Jonathan Lehne (PSE) Michael Callen (Harvard)

Oliver Vanden Eynde (PSE) Ali Cheema (CERP/IDEAS)

Adnan Khan (Oxford)

Asad Liaqat (Harvard)

Farooq Naseer (LUMS)

Co-Investigators:

Why This Matters

2

Streetlight outside PTI supporter’s home in

Lahore, September 2015

PMLN supporter’s home <100m away,

bears name of the candidate who got the

light placed there using government

resources

Part 1: Political Influence on PMGSY

3 Deterrence with Proxies - Minerva / ONR

Data

4

Variable Source Definition

Contractor

political

connections

PMGSY &

ECI

Change in share of contractors sharing last

name of winner and runner-up

Missing roads 2011

census &

PMGSY

For roads officially completed before start of

2011 census variable = 1 if all villages listed on

road had no road (tarmac, gravel, or wbm) in

2011 census

Cost PMGSY Log(sanctioned cost/km)

Delays PMGSY Actual date of completion – contracted date of

completion (in days)

Cost Overruns PMGSY Total final cost/sanctioned cost

Quality PMGSY Dummy variable = 1 if road “unsatisfactory” or

“in need of improvement” in latest inspection

Traditional RD Plot

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-.2 -.1 0 .1 .2Win margin

Linear fit Quadratic fit

Varying Sample Bandwidth

6 24 February 2016

So What?

7

Politicians have no formal role in PMGSY, but their

influence on contract allocations is significant:

– Share with winner’s name increases from 4% to 7%

– 1600 road contracts (worth ≈ $ 470 million) affected

– Cost 12% more, 14% more likely to fail inspection

– 73 additional missing roads ≈ 125,000 people

deprived of access to wider Indian economy.

– But there’s no electoral cycling

So why do politicians get away with this?

Part 2: Political Networks and Voting

8

Add for UC-48 Chairman and Vice-Chairman Add for UC-48 General Councilor

Candidates

Pre-Election Experiment

9

Treatment:

– Political connections of candidates

– Spending by the current government

Outcomes:

– Beliefs about connections

– Beliefs about government performance

– Satisfaction with performance

– Support for candidates

Experimental Results

10

Beliefs:

– Movement depends on priors

– Those who underestimate move up & vice versa

Satisfaction:

– Moved up in places government spends a lot

– Not moved by connectedness information

Support:

– Connectedness information moves it up

– Performance information does not

What Happened in the Election?

11

What Happened in the Election?

12

Connections matter, a lot…

– 353 candidates polled >1,000 votes

– 209 more votes if connected to current MPA

– 16% greater chance of winning

But…

– If MPA is PML-N it’s 275 more votes

– 401 less if MPA is PTI

– Ties to Thana/Katcheri matter even more

– And correlation with past service delivery

Conclusion

13

Political influence is costly

And voters are choosing on factors other than

performance

The impact of past performance on voter evaluations is

small vs. prospective assessments of what politicians can

do for them based on politician characteristics

Presents a challenge if we expect local government to

solve accountability gaps