Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies (Modern South Asia)

This book provides a theoretical and empirical examination of constituency service in developing countries. The predominant view of distributive politics in “patronage democracies” emphasizes the partisan targeting of pork and clientelism. In contrast, this book demonstrates that high-level legislators in India and other contexts often provide direct, nonpartisan assistance to individual constituents. Under what conditions do they provide constituency service, rather than engage in partisan bias? The book shows that the uneven character of access to services at the local level—often because of biased allocation on the part of local intermediaries—generates demand for help from higher-level officials, and also creates incentives for those politicians to bypass intermediaries by providing direct assistance. It draws on elite and citizen surveys, interviews, qualitative shadowing, and experiments to explore the dynamics of both the demand for constituency service and its supply. The book’s findings highlight the potential for an underappreciated form of democratic accountability, one that is however rooted in the character of patronage-based politics. Scholars of distributive politics often emphasize partisanship and clientelism. However, as Jennifer Bussell demonstrates in Clients and Constituents, legislators in "patronage democracies" also provide substantial constituency service: non-contingent, direct assistance to individual citizens. Bussell shows how the uneven character of access to services at the local level-often due to biased allocation on the part of local intermediaries-generates demand for help from higher-level officials. The nature of these appeals in turn provides incentives for politicians to help their constituents obtain public benefits. Drawing on a new cross-national dataset and extensive evidence from India-including sustained qualitative shadowing of politicians, novel elite and citizen surveys, and an experimental audit study with a near census of Indian state and national legislators-this book provides a theoretical and empirical examination of political responsiveness in developing countries. It highlights the potential for an under-appreciated form of democratic accountability, one that is however rooted in the character of patronage-based politics. "Existing work suggests that legislators in countries like India should spend little time engaging with individual citizens and, if they do, should focus their attention on co-partisans. Yet, there is anecdotal evidence that these politicians actually spend substantial time assisting individual citizens with access to basic state services. In this book, I show that helping individual voters is a key part of these representatives' activities and that, in contrast with existing expectations, they do not generally discriminate against their non-copartisans in providing assistance. Yet, this constituency service differs from that observed in Western democracies, as it arises from the partisan nature of distribution at the local level. Thus, Indian politicians are more accountable to citizens than we previously expected, but this accountability is linked to, and constrained by, the character of patronage-based politics"-- Provided by publisher This text provides a theoretical and empirical examination of constituency service in developing countries. The predominant view of distributive politics in 'patronage democracies' emphasizes the partisan targeting of pork and clientelism. In contrast, this work demonstrates that high-level legislators in India and other contexts often provide direct, nonpartisan assistance to individual constituents. Under what conditions do they provide constituency service, rather than engage in partisan bias? The text shows that the uneven character of access to services at the local level - often because of biased allocation on the part of local intermediaries - generates demand for help from higher-level officials, and also creates incentives for those politicians to bypass intermediaries by providing direct assistance