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Tag Search: “democracy”

When criminality begets crime: The role of elected politicians

The criminalisation of politics has become a massive threat to society. While the impact of criminally accused leaders on economic outcomes has been studied in the literature, little is known about th...

  • Perspectives

A world of no lockdowns: The case of South Korea and Sweden

While most of the world was under lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, two countries, Sweden and South Korea, decided to keep their economies open. In this post, Bhatia et al. use a metric o...

  • Perspectives

Drought relief by state governments: Evidence from South India

In developing countries, extreme climate events can have disastrous consequences for vulnerable populations. This article analyses state government’s responses to droughts in South India during 2008-2...

  • Articles

Regionalist party representation and tribal insecurity

Observers have long been ambivalent about regionalism as a principle underlying the organisation of politics. Analysing data from India, this article shows that when regionalist parties win elections,...

  • Articles

Ethnic identities, public spending, and political regimes

Do democracies discriminate less against minorities as compared to non-democracies? How does the dominance of an ethnic group affect discrimination under various political regimes? Presenting a theore...

  • Articles

Does the right to vote affect political behaviour? Historical evidence from India

Democracies are known to have better economic development outcomes over the longer run. However, it is not clear whether giving citizens the right to vote is sufficient for ensuring an effective degre...

  • Articles

Covid-19: Is it time to decentralise power?

Raghuram Rajan speaks to Econ Film’s CoronaNomics show, on the merits of de-centralised governance in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic, how local authorities can be empowered, and the risk of ...

  • Videos

Do politicians receive special treatment in courts?

Do Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) facing pending criminal cases receive favourable treatment in the Indian legal system? This article uncovers opposite effects of winning office, depending o...

  • Articles

Do roads bring votes in rural India?

A large-scale rural roads programme in India has provided access to over two-third of villages that lacked a paved road in 2001. Do citizens reward incumbent governments electorally for these improvem...

  • Articles

Oral democracy

Critical scrutiny of the challenges of electoral democracy including elite capture, corruption, and patronage has led to a revival of the idea of direct democracy – giving power directly to groups of ...

  • Articles

Parikshit Ghosh speaks with Debraj Ray

In this podcast, Parikshit Ghosh (Member of the I4I Editorial Board & Associate Professor, Delhi School of Economics) speaks with Debraj Ray (Julius Silver Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, and ...

  • Podcasts

The state of the economy and mass perception

In this article, Ashwini Kulkarni of NGO Pragati Abhiyan contends that the media should tap into the knowledge of practitioners that are familiar with the ground realities of social sector schemes – r...

  • Perspectives