When Voice Leads to Exit: Democracy, Development, and Private Provision

Abstract

For many citizens, social welfare brings them in close contact with their governments. Education, in particular, is a central part of citizens’ lives. From a young age, it seeks to provide students with cognitive skills and human capital, alongside lessons of political and cultural socialization. As a core component of social welfare, governments have typically monopolized the production and maintenance of education; as a popular and pro-poor policy, governments have provided schooling in greater quantities as citizen voice has increased through democratization and democratic competition. Yet despite the centrality of education in the state’s social welfare portfolio, education across the Global South is increasingly provided privately. In this dissertation, I offer a theory of private social welfare expansion, explaining why political elites facilitate the emergence of private welfare markets. I trace the rapid growth of private welfare in the Global South to the pressures of electoral competition. In the late 20th century, as elections became more competitive, politicians faced increased pressure to provide welfare, yet had limited time frames between elections and scarce fiscal resources. I demonstrate that politicians supported private sector social welfare projects to meet this demand. Drawing on evidence from India’s primary education sector and using a school census of nearly 1.2 million public and private schools constructed since independence, I show that electoral competition prompts private welfare expansion and thwarts state efforts to centralize control over education. These results have implications for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand the scope and breadth of welfare institutions, and the role of government and markets in securing and ensuring social welfare. My findings challenge the idea that private alternatives to government services exist only during a transitional period between state absence and state consolidation. Instead, private welfare expansion follows a political logic that may not diminish as state capacity grows.