Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Decentralization, Social Policies and Clientelism in India

政治学博士论文研究：印度的权力下放、社会政策和依附主义

• 批准号: 1423692
• 负责人: Ronald Herring
• 金额: $ 1.76万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-10-01 至 2016-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1423692&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

How do social policies generate opportunities for clientelism? How do varying levels of decentralization in different states within the same country enable or constrain these opportunities? This project uses variation in the design of social programs in rural India to understand whether and how political parties rely on the distribution of public patronage to reach out to voters. It proposes to compare the implementation of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The project seeks to test whether a design that emphasizes the demand for benefits (as is the case under NREGA) is more likely to challenge the parties' monopoly of access to public resources, which is believed to be essential to sustain clientelism. The intellectual merit of the project is associated with its documentation of how the demand for benefits is politically activated or not. The project proposes to use variation in decentralization levels in two neighboring Indian states to test this implication in different institutional settings - one in which decentralization has been pursued (Uttar Pradesh) and another that is still centralized to a large extent (Bihar). After exploring the relationship between poverty levels and spending patterns under each program, the project will involve carrying out a survey experiment to gauge perceptions of political involvement in the attribution of benefits in communities along the states' common border, a bottom-up approach unusual in studies of rural clientelism. Additional interviews conducted with representatives from political parties and local government agencies will help hone in on the mechanisms of clientelism at the village level in India. The recent growth of policies emphasizing the demand for benefits has generated interest, particularly with respect to their broader impact on the recipient communities. In India, this analysis has often limited itself to cases of corruption to the study of women and minority participation. The project goes one step further than a strict analysis of policy effectiveness by investigating the processes of discretionary benefit allocation, rather than the outcome of these processes. This project should be of interest to scholars of decentralization and clientelism as much as to development practitioners who want to make social and development programs as effective as possible in delivering assistance to the poor. Indeed, it focuses on two large social policies implemented in India that are comparable in size yet illustrative of two different approaches to poverty alleviation: whereas one centers on prior means-tested targeting by state agencies (TPDS), the other is implemented based on the anticipated demand for benefits by the beneficiaries themselves (NREGA).

社会政策如何为庇护主义创造机会？在同一个国家的不同州，权力下放的程度不同，如何促进或限制这些机会？本项目利用印度农村社会项目设计的变化来了解政党是否以及如何依靠公共赞助的分配来接触选民。它建议比较有针对性的公共分配制度（TPDS）和国家农村就业保障法（NREGA）的执行情况。该项目旨在检验强调福利需求的设计（如《全国农村就业和机会均等法》）是否更有可能挑战各方对公共资源的垄断，而这种垄断被认为是维持客户主义的必要条件。该项目的知识价值在于它记录了对福利的需求是如何在政治上被激活的。该项目建议利用印度两个相邻邦的权力下放程度差异来测试不同体制环境下的这一影响--一个邦一直在推行权力下放（北方邦），另一个邦在很大程度上仍然是中央集权（比哈尔邦）。在探索了每个方案下贫困水平与支出模式之间的关系之后，该项目将涉及进行一项调查实验，以衡量对沿着各州共同边界社区利益分配中政治参与的看法，这是一种在农村客户主义研究中不常见的自下而上的方法。与政党和地方政府机构代表进行的其他访谈将有助于了解印度村庄一级的裙带关系机制。最近强调福利需求的政策有所增加，引起了人们的兴趣，特别是对受援社区的广泛影响。在印度，这种分析往往局限于腐败案件，研究妇女和少数群体的参与。该项目通过调查可自由支配的福利分配过程，而不是这些过程的结果，比严格分析政策有效性更进一步。这一项目应该引起权力下放和客户主义学者的兴趣，也应该引起那些希望使社会和发展方案尽可能有效地向穷人提供援助的发展实践者的兴趣。事实上，它侧重于在印度实施的两项大型社会政策，这两项政策在规模上相当，但说明了两种不同的扶贫方法：一种是以国家机构（TPDS）事先进行的经济状况调查为中心，另一种是根据受益人本身对福利的预期需求（NREGA）来实施的。