Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Who Gets Public Goods? The Politics of Public Service Provision in India

当预算限制使政府有必要实行配给时，政府如何分配基本公共服务？该项目涉及这一关键问题，以前所未有的地理精确度研究了过去20年来印度北部稀缺电力的供应情况。印度的缺电人口比世界上任何其他国家都多，尤其是在北方邦，据估计，该邦有5000万人没有接入电网。这项研究利用一组新颖的夜间灯光卫星图像、政府有关电力分配的官方数据，并利用地理信息系统技术和统计方法来确定随时间变化的模式，分析了过去四个邦选举周期中北方邦电力供应的变化。通过观察这一剧烈的社会和政治变化时期，评估了贫困公民通过投票站改善公共服务提供的能力。在一个州议会选区内进行了密集的田野调查和访谈，以证实统计分析的结果并阐明原因机制。其结果是对一个世界上贫困最集中的民主地区如何分配整体公共服务进行了详细而准确的分析。该项目的学术价值在于其对发展中民主国家基本公共服务如何分配的理论研究。由于电力和其他基本服务是经济发展的必需品，这项研究对世界穷人的生活前景具有重要影响。印度的这项研究通过测试一种理论的可观察影响，该理论将选举竞争力的差异与选民对当地公共产品的重视联系在一起，旨在明确地与一个更广泛的项目联系起来，该项目考察整个发展中国家的地方公共产品的提供情况。该项目还通过向学者和政策制定者提供信息，让他们了解政治机构调解向穷人提供公共服务的方式，从而产生更广泛的影响。这项研究与所有发展中民主国家有关，在这些国家，政府面临着在公民之间分配稀缺资源的挑战。此外，通过深入验证将卫星图像作为电气化指标的使用情况，该项目还为研究世界其他地区的电力供应提供了新的机会。鉴于我们根本不知道在许多国家谁得到了公共服务，这项技术的应用对社会科学研究做出了重大贡献

How do governments apportion basic public services when budget constraints necessitate their rationing? This project engages this critical question by examining the provision of scarce electrical power in northern India over the last two decades at an unprecedented level of geographic precision. More people in India lack electricity than any other country in the world, and nowhere more so than in the state of Uttar Pradesh where an estimated 50 million people are unconnected to the power grid. Drawing on a novel set of satellite imagery of nighttime lights, official government data on electricity distribution, and harnessing geographic information systems technology andstatistical methods to identify patterns of change over time, this research analyzes variations in electricity provision across Uttar Pradesh over the last four state election cycles. By observing this period of dramatic social and political change, the ability of poor citizens to garner improvements in public service delivery via the polling booth was evaluated. Intensive fieldwork and interviews within one state assembly constituency were designed to substantiate the results of the statistical analysis and elucidate causal mechanisms. The results are a detailed and precise analysis of how an integral public service is distributed in a democratic region with one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the world.The project's intellectual merit lies in its theoretical investigation of how basic public services are distributed in developing democracies. Since electricity and other basic services are requisites for economic development, this research has critical implications for the life prospects of the world's poor. By testing the observable implications of a theory that links variations in electoral competitiveness and the value placed on local public goods by voters, the research in India is designed to explicitly connect with a broader project that examines the provision of local public goods across the entire developing world.The project also has broader impacts by informing scholars and policy makers of the ways in which political institutions mediate the delivery of public services to the poor. The study is relevant to all developing democracies in which governments face the challenge of allocating scarce resources among their citizenry. In addition, by intensively validating the use of satellite imagery as an indicator of electrification, the project also opens new opportunities for the study of electricity provision in the rest of the world. Given that we simply do not know who gets public services in many countries, the application of this technology makes a significant contribution to social sciences research