Rethinking clientelism: Politics of service delivery in rural India

Why in developing countries do some communities receive better access than others to government anti-poverty programmes that are ostensibly rule-based? For decades, the dominant framework for understanding this puzzle has been the literature on ‘clientelism’, which suggests that politicians manipulate public funds in order to cultivate political support. But are citizens simply passive recipients of funds distributed from above? The findings of this research suggest not. The communities that are best served by the government are those that possess both top-down political connections to the ruling party, as well as high levels of grassroots local democratic mobilisation needed to place pressure on local politicians to deliver services.

To study this puzzle, researchers examined how the performance of India’s largest rural anti-poverty programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), varied across villages in Rajasthan – a poor, arid state in Western India where demand for the programme is particularly intense. MORSEL interviewed 2250 households and 500 village council members from 100 Panchayats in 20 blocks.