Ethnic Quotas and Political Mobilization: Caste, Parties, and Distribution in Indian Village Councils

Abstract

Ethnic quotas are often expected to induce distribution of material benefits to members of disadvantaged groups. Yet, the presence of an ethnic quota does not imply that political mobilization takes place along ethnic lines: Cross-cutting affiliations within multi-ethnic party organizations may lessen the tendency of politicians to target benefits to particular ethnic groups. In this article, we evaluate the impact of quotas for the presidencies of village councils in India, a subject of considerable recent research. Drawing on fine-grained information from surveys of voters, council members, presidents, and bureaucrats and using a natural experiment to isolate the effects of quotas in the states of Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Bihar, we find weak distributive effects of quotas for marginalized castes and tribes, but suggestive evidence of the importance of partisanship. We then use survey experiments to compare the influence of party and caste on voting preferences and expectations of benefit receipt. Our results suggest that especially when politicians have dynamic political incentives to allocate benefits along party lines, cross-cutting partisan ties can blunt the distributive impact of ethnic quotas.