Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: On Political Inequality--Measurement, Causes, Effects and Remedies

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Although many societies have sought to attain the ideal of political equality, all societies are politically unequal to varying degrees. Scholars have argued that political inequality has pernicious effects on a number of socio-economic outcomes, such as health and income, and have proposed many remedies for political inequality. Systematic analysis of the causes and effects of, and remedies for, political inequality is lacking, however. This is the case for at least two reasons. First, there is no widely-agreed upon and practical way to measure political inequality across jurisdictions. And second, studies of political inequality have a hard time ascertaining whether political inequality causes various socio-economic outcomes or vice-versa. This project will surmount the measurement problem through designing a "protocol" to measure political inequality in any jurisdiction, and will demonstrate its use by implementing it in India. It will address the possibility of reverse causality by analyzing detailed socio-economic data from a number of "natural experiments" in India. India is an appropriate context for studying political inequality because the country has large sub-national (geographical, community and class-based) variation in political access, and because the country has repeatedly tried to mitigate these inequities. The natural experiments studied will be used to examine the effects of political inequality due to malapportionment in a context not considered by the literature (parliamentary systems), and will analyze the efficacy of a common remedy (electoral quotas) for political inequality. The broader impacts of this study include the potential to catalyze a research program on political inequality by demonstrating that political inequality is measureable and is amenable to study. The resulting research program will be significant because while political equality is a widely-espoused normative ideal, we have little empirical knowledge about the phenomenon. The project will also help advance existing research programs on political recruitment and policy making. Lastly, this research promises to have important policy implications since it will allow us to better understand the causes and effects of, and remedies for, political inequality.