Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (Professor of Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) and Rohini Pande (Professor of Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School)
This survey examined the relationship between ethnic polarization among voters and politician quality as measured by their competence and/or degree of corruption. The survey elicited information on constituency-level development, changes in the wealth of politicians after they came to office, and how government funds were allocated among various projects. MORSEL was an implementing partner for the survey, in which more than 600 politicians and journalists were interviewed, across 51 (of 70) districts of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Professor Banerjee and Professor Pande selected districts for the clustering. In each district, six politicians and six journalists were selected from three election years (1969, 1980 and 1996). For the sampling, we first prepared a list of politicians and journalists who were there at the time of the survey and then chose randomly from this list.
Location: Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand
