Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies

First time ever in India, MORSEL conducted a study to shadow the MLAs, MPs and Village Heads for 7 days in four states. The researcher is writing a book based on the data collected by Morsel and this book provides a theoretical and empirical examination of constituency service in developing countries. The predominant view of distributive politics in “patronage democracies” emphasizes the partisan targeting of pork and clientelism. In contrast, I demonstrate that high-level legislators in India and other contexts often provide direct, non-partisan assistance to individual constituents. Under what conditions do they provide constituency service, rather than engage in partisan bias? I show that the uneven character of access to services at the local level—often due to biased allocation on the part of local intermediaries—generates demand for help from higher-level officials, and also creates incentives for those politicians to bypass intermediaries by providing direct assistance. The book’s findings highlight the potential for an under-appreciated form of democratic accountability, one that is however rooted in the character of patronage-based politics