Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/248367 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2021/153
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
This paper argues that new computer, smartphone, and universal ID technologies are reducing the incentives for political clientelism in the delivery of social programmes in India, especially by allowing party leaders to bypass local brokers to credit-claim for better service delivery and allowing politicians to deliver programmatic service delivery much more efficiently than in the past, with fewer diversions. Politicians are responding to these changed incentives, not surprisingly, by investing more money in large social programmes, supporting technological efforts to improve their efficiency, and increasing campaign expenditures to advertise these improvements and link them to party leaders at the expense of local brokers who used to monopolize these local party- voter linkages.
Subjects: 
clientelism
India
technologies
social programmes
service delivery
JEL: 
D72
O32
O33
O38
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-093-1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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