Whose side are you on? Identifying the Distributive Preference of local Politicians in India

The literature on decentralized public programs suggests that errors in the targeting of anti-poverty programs are rooted in the capture of these programs by local elites or local politicians. Consistent with the literature on moral economy in political science and experimental economics, researchers argued that voters in contexts of rural poverty prefer local leaders who target subsistence benefits to the poor. In a high information village context, where voters and leaders know each other, researchers argue that local elections lead to the selection of local leaders with pro-poor preferences over the distribution of these benefits. Researchers showed this with a novel theory of local politicians’ social preferences. They test this theory with unique data from a behavioral measure, conducted in the context of a lottery with a modest cash prize in rural India, that captures a scenario in which local leaders have full discretion and anonymity over allocation among members of their rural communities. The survey covered 12 blocks of rural Rajasthan.