Growing cleavages in India? Evidence from the changing structure of electorates, 1962–2014
Name
document.pdf
Description
Submitted version
Size
1.66 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ddd1b98d4139b3c026e47c0000506013
Author(s)
Banerjee, Abhijit
Gethin, Amory
Piketty, Thomas
Date Issued
2019
Journal
World Inequality Lab working paper
Publisher
World Inequality Lab
Citation
Banerjee, Abhijit, Amory Gethin, and Thomas Piketty. Growing Cleavages in India? Evidence from the Changing Structure of Electorates, 1962-2014. World Inequality Lab working paper 2019, 5 (2019) ©2019 Author(s)
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
This paper combines surveys, election results and social spending data to document a long-run evolution of political cleavages in India. The transition from a dominant-party system to a fragmented system characterised by several smaller regionalist parties and, more recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party, coincides with the rise of religious divisions and the persistence of strong caste-based cleavages, while education, income and occupation play a diminishing role (controlling for caste) in determining voters’ choices. More importantly, there is no evidence of the new party system of being associated with changes in social policy, which corroborates the fact that in India, as in many Western democracies, political conflicts are increasingly focused on identity and religious–ethnic conflicts rather than on tangible material benefits and class-based redistribution. ©2019
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
