Growth and Election Outcomes in a Developing Country

2011

In this paper we provide the first analysis of the relationship of growth to election outcomes in India. Using a comprehensive data set consisting of all candidates contesting the election, we also provide the first systematic quantitative analysis of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Our key result is that superior growth performance at the level of the state gives a definite advantage to the candidates of the state incumbent party in the constituencies of that state. Conversely, poor growth performance of a state is associated with poor electoral performance by the candidates of the state incumbent party in the constituencies of that state. We offer two additional results: personal characteristics such as education and wealth have at most a small impact on election outcomes; and, at least in the 2009 election, incumbency at all levels contributed positively to election prospects of a candidate.

Economic and Political Weekly , 2019

Understanding the determinants of elections has been a major area of research in modern political economy ever since first vote functions were reported in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Equally important has been the research in determining impact of incumbency on elections outcomes. In this paper we are primarily interested in factors that determine the outcome (win or loss) of an election in the context of Parliamentary elections in India. We use data from 10 Indian Parliamentary elections from 1980 to 2014. For each constituency, we include data on the top two candidates which gives a total 8482 observations. We employ logistic regressions to estimate a vote function with political variables as determinants. In addition to the incumbency variable, we also use political alignment variables and political party affiliation variables in our equations. To extract the precise effect of incumbency we employ an approach common in the incumbency literature which focuses on elections where the incumbent narrowly won the previous election. We find that when we restrict attention to close elections, incumbency reduces the chances of winning elections. The exercises in this paper explore this effect of incumbency over the various elections, across regions of India and by partitioning the states in India on the basis of socio-economic indicators such as real per capita income, share of rural population and literacy rates. We are able to show that incumbency disadvantage has been strong in elections held from 1998 onwards, in Hindi-speaking states of India, and in states, which have relatively low real per capita income, higher share of rural population and low literacy rates.

The Indian Economic Journal, 2019

Since independence in 1947, India has witnessed several changes in economic policies of governments. Economic reforms were started in India in 1984 and were accelerated later in 1991. It is believed that Bharatiya Janata Party won the 2014 parliamentary elections on the promise of economic development and growth. In this article, an attempt has been made to investigate the link between economic and electoral performances in Indian elections. The data for 1951–2014 period has been analysed by establishing regression equations using vote percentage received by a ruling party as dependent variable and sectoral economic growth during the ruling tenure as independent variables. Comparisons have been made between the pre- and post-1984 eras. An important contribution of this article is that it highlights the fact that electoral performances can be better explained using sectoral growth data as compared to overall GDP growth rates. The article also highlights a significant role played by v...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017

Using actual voting records of simultaneous elections held for Indian federal and regional assemblies-where same political parties contest against each other in both type of electionswe identify non-committed voters. These are split ticket voters who vote for different parties in two different but simultaneous election. We find that the representatives supported by such voters outperform significantly with respect to both constituency level outcomes as well as measures based on individual effort. Having controlled for the impact of observable factors, we follow Imbens (2003); Harada (2012) and conduct generalized sensitivity analysis in order to account for the influence of unobservables.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2003

We discuss here the probability of incumbent part.\"s winning the election from the same constituency..We est-imate the probabilitl, of winning by the ruling parl,, irrespective of whether that parb,forms a coalition during election, has been ct member of the last government in the centre. We istimate the average probabilin' of winning in India's general elections from 197 1 to 1999, under the given electoral system, using a panel data Binary Choice Model.

"Anti-incumbency" is a familiar refrain among politicians and journalists around election time. In this paper, we attempt to empirically detect and analyze incumbency effects in Lok Sabha elections in India. We define incumbency effects as the change in the proportion of votes polled by an incumbent party candidate from that in the previous election in a particular constituency. We show that Indian elections are frequently marked by a constituency-level anti-incumbency effect. However, regarding the effect on votes polled by a "ruling party at centre" candidate, there is no consistent pattern over time. Being in power at the centre may act for or against a party or leave it unaffected at the polls. * We thank Kajli Bakshi and Ong-Ard Singtokul for research assistance.

The Journal of Development Studies, 2017

This paper analyses the impact of elections, partisan and political support effects on the dynamics of human development in a panel of 82 countries over the period 1980-2013. A GMM estimator is employed and the results point out to the presence of an electoral cycle in the growth rate of human development. Majority governments also influence it, but no evidence is found regarding partisan effects. The electoral cycles have proved to be stronger in non-OECD countries, in countries with less frequent elections, with lower levels of income and human development, in presidential and non-plurality systems and in proportional representation regimes.

ERN: Economic Growth & Aggregate Productivity in Developing Economies (Topic), 2014

Does democracy increase economic growth? Previous literature tends to find a positive effect but does also suffer from possible endogeneity problems: democratization is typically not random and might be affected by factors that also have an impact on economic growth. This paper narrows down the question to empirically estimating the causal effect of local elections on local economic growth in Indonesia by using a quasi-experimental research method. The first direct elections of district leaders in Indonesia were performed in a staggered manner, and decided such that the year of election is exogenous. Thus, growth in districts that have had their first elections of district heads can be compared with growth in districts that have not had a direct election, which more specifically is performed by using a difference-in-difference approach. Our estimations show no general effect of local elections on economic growth. The result is robust to various robustness tests and is supported by d...

2016

Are political parties in India witnessing disadvantaged position in the subsequent election t + 1 due to holding office in current elections t? Are the constituencies in India politically polarized? Are there different policy outcomes of political polarization in India? The answer is “yes” to all these questions. Using a regression discontinuity design I establish that post 1998 INC is 0.381 times less probable to hold an office in the subsequent period (period t+1) if it already holds an office from their constituencies (in the current period t) and that given same winning vote margin, same gender and age level and comparable constituencies characteristic, INC Member of Parliaments (MPs) are likely to utilize about 10 percent more of the development funds available to them. Further using an OLS estimation strategy I find that if INC observes an increase in the seat in parliament won surprisingly over all the other surprise seats lost, there will be decrease in the spending for drin...

Recent empirical work on US elections argues that any relationship between exogenous shocks and election outcomes is evidence of voter irrationality. In contrast, I develop a theoretical framework which highlights two di¤erent mechanisms underlying politician behavior, e¤ort and corruption, which relate exogenous shocks to election outcomes under the assumption of complete voter rationality. Although corruption is generally considered the motivation underlying politician behavior, I show that the more benign e¤ort story also leads to the same predictions on electoral outcomes. In addition, the model shows that the relationship between politician behavior and thus probabilities of re-election and rainfall can vary with the underlying political environment of incumbency advantage or disadvantage. I empirically examine the relationship between politician re-election and rainfall using data from both Indian and Pakistani parliamentary elections. The results show that rainfall is signi…cantly positively related to re-election in times of incumbency advantage and negatively related to re-election in times of incumbency disadvantage in both countries, consistent with the theoretical framework. Furthermore, evidence using development fund spending and politician occupations shows that the results are consistent with the e¤ort story.