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

社会政策如何为裙带主义创造机会？同一国家内不同州的不同程度的权力下放如何促进或限制这些机会？该项目利用印度农村社会项目设计的不同，来了解政党是否以及如何依赖公众赞助的分布来接触选民。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)的实施情况。该项目旨在测试强调利益需求的设计是否更有可能挑战各方对公共资源的垄断，这被认为是维持裙带主义的关键。该项目的智力价值与其对福利需求如何在政治上被激活或不被激活的文件相关联。该项目建议利用印度相邻的两个邦权力下放程度的差异，在不同的机构环境中测试这一影响--一个是实行权力下放的邦(北方邦)，另一个是在很大程度上仍是中央集权的邦(比哈尔邦)。在探索了每个项目下贫困水平和支出模式之间的关系后，该项目将进行一项调查实验，以衡量在各州共同边界的社区中，人们对政治参与利益分配的看法，这是一种自下而上的方法，在农村裙带主义研究中很少见。对政党和地方政府机构代表进行的更多采访将有助于深入了解印度村级的裙带关系机制。最近强调福利需求的政策的增长引起了人们的兴趣，特别是在这些政策对受助者社区的更广泛影响方面。在印度，这种分析往往局限于腐败案件，对妇女和少数群体参与的研究。该项目通过调查酌情分配利益的过程，而不是这些过程的结果，比对政策有效性的严格分析更进一步。这个项目应该引起权力下放和裙带主义学者的兴趣，也应该引起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从业者的兴趣。事实上，它侧重于在印度实施的两项大型社会政策，这两项政策的规模相当，但说明了两种不同的扶贫方法：一项集中于国家机构先前进行的经济状况调查目标(TPDS)，另一项基于受益人本身对福利的预期需求(NREGA)。

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).