Political Clientelism and Government Accountability in West Bengal: Theory and Evidence

Dilip Mookherjee

31 October 2012

2

min read

Notes from the Field

IGC Research on India

Explainers

This project provide a theory of political clientelism, which explains sources and determinants of political clientelism, the relationship between clientelism and elite capture, and their respective consequences for allocation of public services, welfare and empirical measurement of government accountability in service delivery. Using data from household surveys in rural West Bengal, it argues that the model helps explain observed impacts of political reservations in local governments that are difficult to reconcile with standard models of redistributive politics.

University of California, Berkeley

Dilip Mookherjee

Boston University

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