Effect of Redrawing of Political Boundaries on Voting Patterns: Evidence from State Reorganization in India
Effect of Redrawing of Political Boundaries on Voting Patterns: Evidence from State Reorganization in India
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政治边界的重新划分对投票模式的影响：来自印度国家重组的证据
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1014387
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Joydeep Roy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Chakrabarti;Joydeep Roy
本文分析了政治边界的重新划分对投票模式的影响，并研究了它是否会导致选民的投票模式与其政治偏好更加一致。我们在印度各邦重组的背景下研究这些问题。2000年，重组前印度最大的邦中央邦被细分为中央邦和恰蒂斯加尔邦，后者占未分割的中央邦选民的不到四分之一。利用社会经济构成和传统的投票模式，我们认为在中央邦和恰蒂斯加尔邦之间存在政治偏好的差异。接下来，在一个理论模型的背景下，该模型捕捉了两个地区选举场景的一些基本特征，我们预测在重组之前，较小的地区将策略性地投票选出与较大地区的偏好更接近的代表。然而，一旦恰蒂斯加尔邦成为一个独立的邦，这一动机将不再有效，两个地区的投票分布将有所不同。利用1993年、1998年和2003年中央邦和恰蒂斯加尔邦选举的详细数据以及差异中之差估计策略，我们发现这两个地区的投票模式在重组前确实非常相似，但重组后却大相径庭，恰蒂斯加尔邦相对倾向于其固有的政治偏好。这些发现是相当稳健的，因为在控制了其他混杂因素后，它们继续保持不变，并通过了几次敏感性测试。
This paper analyzes the effect of a redrawing of political boundaries on voting patterns and investigates whether it leads to closer conformity of an electorate's voting patterns with its political preferences. We study these issues in the context of a reorganization of states in India. In 2000, Madhya Pradesh, the biggest state in India before the reorganization, was subdivided into Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the latter accounting for less than one-fourth of the electorate of undivided Madhya Pradesh. Using socioeconomic composition and traditional voting patterns, we argue that there are differences in political preferences between Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Next, in the context of a theoretical model that captures some of the basic features of the electoral scenario of the two regions, we predict that before reorganization, the smaller region would vote strategically to elect representatives with preferences more closely aligned to those of the bigger region. Once Chhattisgarh became a separate state, however, this motive would no longer operate, and the voting distributions of the two regions would differ. Using detailed data on state elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in 1993, 1998, and 2003 as well as a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that voting patterns in the two regions were indeed very similar before reorganization but strikingly different afterwards, with a relative shift in Chhattisgarh toward its inherent political preferences. These findings are reasonably robust in that they continue to hold after controlling for other confounding factors and survive several sensitivity tests.