Econometrica, Vol. 72, No. 5 (September, 2004), 1409–1443
WOMEN AS POLICY MAKERS: EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED POLICY EXPERIMENT IN INDIA
BY RAGHABENDRA CHATTOPADHYAY AND ESTHER DUFLO1 This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women’s leadership on policy decisions. Since the mid-1990’s, one third of Village Council head positions in India have been randomly reserved for a woman: In these councils only women could be elected to the position of head. Village Councils are re- sponsible for the provision of many local public goods in rural areas. Using a dataset we collected on 265 Village Councils in West Bengal and Rajasthan, we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved Village Councils. We show that the reservation of a council seat affects the types of public goods provided. Specifically, leaders invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of their own genders.
KEYWORDS: Gender, decentralization, affirmative action, political economy.
1. INTRODUCTION RELATIVE TO THEIR SHARE IN THE POPULATION, women are under-repre- sented in all political positions. In June 2000, women represented 13.8% of all parliament members in the world, up from 9% in 1987. Compared to eco- nomic opportunities, education, and legal rights, political representation is the area in which the gap between men and women has narrowed the least between 1995 and 2000 (Norris and Inglehart (2000)). Political reservations for women are often proposed as a way to rapidly enhance women’s ability to participate in policymaking. Quotas for women in assemblies or on parties’ candidate lists are in force in the legislation of over 30 countries (World Bank (2001)), and in the internal rules of at least one party in 12 countries of the European Union (Norris (2001)). Reservation policies clearly have a strong impact on women’s representa- tion,2 and there is evidence that women and men have different policy prefer- ences (Lott and Kenny (1999) and Edlund and Pande (2001)). This does not
1We thank Daron Acemoglu, Abhijit Banerjee, Timothy Besley, Anne Case, Mihir Ghosh Dastidar, Angus Deaton, Marie Lajus, Steve Levitt, Rohini Pande, and Emmanuel Saez for dis- cussions, Prasid Chakraborty and Mihir Ghosh Dastidar for organizing and supervising the data collection in West Bengal, Callie Scott and Annie Duflo for organizing the data collection in Rajasthan, Lucia Breierova, Shawn Cole, and Jonathan Robinson for excellent research assis- tance, and the editor as well as four anonymous referees for very useful comments on previ- ous drafts. We also thank the National Institute of Health (through grant RO1HD39922-01), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation for financial support. Chattopadhyay thanks the Institute for Economic Development at Boston University for its hospitality. 2See Jones (1998) for a study of the Argentinian case, and Norris (2001) for the impact of reservation in the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Women’s representation fell from 25% to 7% in Eastern Europe when gender quotas were eliminated during the transition from Com- munism (World Bank (2001)).
1409 1410 R. CHATTOPADHYAY AND E. DUFLO necessarily imply, however, that women’s reservation has an impact on policy decisions. In a standard median voter model (e.g., Downs (1957)), where can- didates can commit to a specific policy and have electoral motives, political decisions reflect the preferences of the electorate. Alternatively, in a Coasian world, even if the reservation policy increases women’s bargaining power, only transfers to women should be affected; the efficient policy choices will still be made, and women will be compensated with direct transfers. However, despite the importance of this issue for the design of institutions, very little is known about the causal effect of women’s representation on pol- icy decisions. The available evidence, based on cross-sectional comparison, is difficult to interpret, because the fact that women are better represented in a particular country or locality may reflect the political preferences of the group that elects them. The correlation between policy outcomes and women’s par- ticipation then may not imply a causal effect from women’s participation.3 Furthermore, even if we knew more about the causal effect of women’s representation, this knowledge would not necessarily extend to the effects of quotas or other mechanisms to enforce greater participation of women in the political process. Ensuring women’s representation through quotas may change the nature of political competition and thus have direct effects. For example, it may lower the average competence in the pool of eligible candi- dates, alter voter preferences for political parties, or increase the number of politicians that are new in office. This paper studies the policy consequences of mandated representation of women by taking advantage of a unique experiment implemented recently in India. In 1993, an amendment to the constitution of India required the States both to devolve more power over expenditures to local village councils (Gram Panchayats, henceforth GPs) and to reserve one-third of all positions of chief (Pradhan) to women. Since then, most Indian States have had two Panchayat elections (Bihar and Punjab had only one, in 2001 and 1998 respectively), and at least one-third of village representatives are women in all major States ex- cept Uttar Pradesh, where only 25% of the village representatives are women (Chaudhuri (2003)). We conducted a detailed survey of all investments in local public goods in a sample of villages in two districts, Birbhum in West Bengal and Udaipur in Rajasthan, and compared investments made in reserved and unreserved GPs. As GPs were randomly selected to be reserved for women, dif- ferences in investment decisions can be confidently attributed to the reserved status of those GPs.
3For example, Dollar, Fisman, and Gatti (2001) find a negative correlation between represen- tation of women in parliaments and corruption. Does this mean women are less corrupt, or that countries that are less corrupt are also more likely to elect women to parliament? Besley and Case (2000) show that worker compensation and child support enforcement policies are more likely to be introduced in states where there are more women in parliament, after controlling for state and year fixed effects. But they explicitly recognize that the fraction of women in parliament may be a proxy for women’s involvement in politics, more generally. WOMEN AS POLICY MAKERS 1411
The results suggest that reservation affects policy choices. In particular, it affects policy decisions in ways that seem to better reflect women’s prefer- ences. The gender preferences of men and women are proxied by the types of formal requests brought to the GP by each gender. In West Bengal, women complain more often than men about drinking water and roads, and there are more investments in drinking water and roads in GPs reserved for women. In Rajasthan, women complain more often than men about drinking water but less often about roads, and there are more investments in water and less in- vestment in roads in GPs reserved for women. We exploit specific features of the reservation legislation to further inves- tigate whether the effects on public good provisions can be attributed to the gender of the Pradhan, rather than to other consequences of reserving seats. We specifically investigate whether the results can be explained by the fact that women are inexperienced, that they may perceive themselves as being less likely to be re-elected, and that they tend to come from more disadvan- taged backgrounds than men. We do not find any evidence that the impact of reservation is driven by features other than the gender of the Pradhan. These results thus indicate that a politician’s gender does influence policy decisions. More generally, they provide new evidence on the political process. In particular, they provide strong evidence that the identity of a decision maker does influence policy decisions. This provides empirical support to political economy models that seek to enrich the Downsian model (Alesina (1988), Osborne and Slivinski (1996), and Besley and Coate (1997)). The results are consistent with previous evidence by Levitt (1996), which shows that U.S. Sena- tors’ votes do not reflect either the wishes of their constituency or that of their party, and by Pande (2003), who shows that in Indian States where a larger share of seats is reserved for minorities in the State Legislative Assembly, the level of transfers targeted towards these minorities is also higher. Our paper presents the advantage of being based on a randomized experiment, where identification is entirely transparent. The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 describes the political context and the policy. Section 3 presents a simple model, based on the “citizen candidate” model of Osborne and Slivinski (1996) and Besley and Coate (1997), which outlines the possible effect of the reservation system. Section 4 discusses the data collection and the empirical strategy. Section 5 presents the central results of the paper: the difference in public goods pro- visions in reserved and unreserved GPs. Section 6 presents robustness checks. Section 7 concludes.
2. THE POLICY AND DESIGN OF THE STUDY 2.1. The Panchayat System The Panchayat is a system of village level (Gram Panchayat), block level (Panchayat Samiti), and district level (Zilla Parishad) councils, members of 1412 R. CHATTOPADHYAY AND E. DUFLO which are elected by the people, and are responsible for the administration of local public goods. Each Gram Panchayat (GP) encompasses 10,000 people in several villages (between 5 and 15). The GPs do not have jurisdiction over urban areas, which are administered by separate municipalities. Voters elect a council, which then elects among its members a Pradhan (chief) and an Upa- Pradhan (vice-chief).4 Candidates are generally nominated by political parties, but have to be residents of the villages they represent. The council makes deci- sions by majority voting (the Pradhan does not have veto power). The Pradhan, however, is the only member of the council with a full-time appointment. The Panchayat system has existed formally in most of the major states of India since the early 1950’s. However, in most states, the system was not an ef- fective body of governance until the early 1990’s. Elections were not held, and the Panchayats did not assume any active role (Ghatak and Ghatak (2002)). In 1992, the 73rd amendment to the Constitution of India established throughout India the framework of a three-tiered Panchayat system with regular elections. It gave the GP primary responsibility in implementing development programs, as well as in identifying the needs of the villages under its jurisdiction. Be- tween 1993 and 2003, all major states but two (Bihar and Punjab) have had at least two elections. The major responsibilities of the GP are to adminis- ter local infrastructure (public buildings, water, roads) and identify targeted welfare recipients. The main source of financing is still the state, but most of the money which was previously earmarked for specific uses is now allocated through four broad schemes: The Jawhar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) for infrastruc- ture (irrigation, drinking water, roads, repairs of community buildings, etc.); a small additional drinking water scheme; funds for welfare programs (widow’s, old age, and maternity pensions, etc.); and a grant for GP functioning.5 The GP has, in principle, complete flexibility in allocating these funds. At this point, the GP has no direct control over the appointments of government paid teachers or health workers, but in some states (Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, for exam- ple), there are Panchayat-run informal schools. The Panchayat is required to organize two meetings per year, called “Gram Samsad.” These are meetings of villagers and village heads in which all voters may participate. The GP council submits the proposed budget to the Gram Samsad, and reports on their activities in the previous six months. The GP leader also must set up regular office hours where villagers can lodge com- plaints or requests. In West Bengal, the Left Front (communist) Government gained power in 1977 on a platform of agrarian and political reform. The major political reform
4In Rajasthan, the chief is called a Sarpanch. In this paper, we will use the terminology “Prad- han” for both States. 5According to the balance sheets we could collect in 40 GPs in West Bengal, the JRY accounts for 30% of total GP income, the drinking water scheme 5%, the welfare programs 15%, the grant for GP functioning 33%, and the GP’s own revenue for 8%. GPs can also apply for some special schemes—a housing scheme for SC/ST, for example. WOMEN AS POLICY MAKERS 1413 was to give life to a three-tiered Panchayat electoral system. The first election took place in 1978 and elections have taken place at five-year intervals ever since. Thus, the system that was put into place by the 73rd Amendment all over India was already well established in West Bengal. Following the Amendment, the GP was given additional responsibilities in West Bengal. In particular, they were entrusted to establish and administer informal education centers (called SSK), an alternative form of education for children who do not attend school (an instructor who is not required to have any formal qualification teaches children three hours a day in a temporary building or outdoors). In Rajasthan, unlike West Bengal, there was no regularly elected Panchayat system in charge of distribution of state funds until 1995. The first election was held in 1995, followed by a second election in 2000. Since 1995, elections and Gram Samsads have been held regularly, and are well attended. This setting is thus very different, with a much shorter history of democratic government. As in West Bengal, the Panchayat can spend money on local infrastructure, but unlike West Bengal, they are not allowed to run their own schools.
2.2. Reservation for Women In 1992, the 73rd Amendment provided that one-third of the seats in all Pan- chayat councils, as well as one-third of the Pradhan positions, must be reserved for women. Seats and Pradhan’s positions were also reserved for the two disad- vantaged minorities in India, scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST), in the form of mandated representation proportional to each minority’s popu- lation share in each district. Reservations for women have been implemented in all major states except Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (which has only reserved 25% of the seats to women). In West Bengal, the Panchayat Constitution Rule was modified in 1993, so as to reserve one-third of the councilor positions in each GP to women; in a third of the villages in each GP, only women could be candidates for the position of councilor for the area. The proportion of women elected to Panchayat councils increased to 36% after the 1993 election. The experience was considered a dis- appointment, however, because very few women (only 196 out of 3,324 GPs) advanced to the position of Pradhan, which is the only one that yields effective power (Kanango (1998)). To conform to the 73rd amendment, the Panchayat Constitution Rule of West Bengal was again modified in April 1998 (Govern- ment of West Bengal (1998)) to introduce reservation of Pradhan positions for women and SC/ST.In Rajasthan, the random rotation system was implemented in 1995 and in 2000 at both levels (council members and Pradhans). In both states, a specific set of rules ensures the random selection of GPs where the office of Pradhan was to be reserved for a woman. All GPs in a district are ranked in consecutive order according to their serial legislative 1414 R. CHATTOPADHYAY AND E. DUFLO number (an administrative number pre-dating this reform). They are then ranked in three separate lists, according to whether or not the seats were re- served for a SC, for a ST, or were unreserved (these reservations were also chosen randomly, following a similar method). Using these lists, every third GP starting with the first on the list is reserved for a woman Pradhan for the first election.6 From discussions with the government officials at the Panchayat Directorate who devised the system and district officials who implemented it in individ- ual districts, it appears that these instructions were successfully implemented. More importantly, in the district we study in West Bengal, we could verify that the policy was strictly implemented. After sorting the GPs into those reserved for SC/ST and those not reserved, we couldreconstructtheentirelistofGPs reserved for a woman by sorting all GPs by their serial number, and selecting every third GP starting from the first in each list. This verifies that the alloca- tion of GPs to the reserved list was indeed random, as intended.7 Table I shows the number of female Pradhans in reserved and unreserved GPs in both states. In both states, all Pradhans in GPs reserved for a woman are female. In West Bengal, only 6.5% of the Pradhans are female in unre- served GPs. In Rajasthan, only one woman was elected on an unreserved seat, despite the fact that this was the second cycle. Women elected once due to the reservation system were not re-elected.8
TABLE I FRACTION OF WOMEN AMONG PRADHANS IN RESERVED AND UNRESERVED GP
Reserved GP Unreserved GP (1) (2) West Bengal Total Number 54 107 Proportion of Female Pradhans 100% 6.5% Rajasthan To t a l N u m b e r 4 0 6 0 Proportion of Female Pradhans 100% 1.7%
6For the next election, every third GP starting with the second on the list was reserved for a woman, etc. The Panchayat Constitution Rule has actual tables indicating the ranks of the GPs to be reserved in each election. 7We could not obtain the necessary information to perform the same exercise in Rajasthan. However, there too, the system appears to have been correctly implemented. 8The one woman elected on an unreserved seat had not been previously elected on a reserved seat. WOMEN AS POLICY MAKERS 1415
3. THEORY 3.1. Model In this section, we analyze the possible effects of the reservation policy in a representative democracy. We use the framework developed in Osborne and Slivinski (1996) and Besley and Coate (1997), where the elected representa- tives are “citizen candidates.” Citizen candidates cannot commit to specific policy platforms. Once elected, politicians will try to implement their preferred policy option. However, citizens know other citizens’ preferences and can influ- ence the final political outcome through their choice of whom to elect. Citizens decide whether or not to run for office by trading off the probability of being elected (and getting to implement their favorite outcomes) against a fixed cost of running for election. This framework is well suited to analyzing decentralized policymaking in In- dia since it is reasonable to assume that citizens in a Gram Panchayat know each other well. In addition, a rationale for reservation in favor of women can be introduced very naturally, by recognizing that women have a much higher cost of running for office than men. These higher costs can prevent the participation of women in the political process in the absence of reserva- tion; consequently, reservations can have a real effect on the decisions taken if women and men have different preferences over which public goods to pro- vide.9 Everyone is eligible to vote and to stand as a candidate. The village elects an individual who will implement a policy, chosen in the interval [0 1].Each citizen has a preferred policy option ωi, and women and men have different policy preferences. Specifically, we assume that women’s preferences are dis- tributed over the interval [0 W], and men’s preferences are distributed over the interval [M 1].10 As in Osborne and Slivinski (1996) and Besley and Coate (1997), the political game has three stages. Citizens first decide whether or not to run. The cost of running for women, δw, is greater than the cost of running for men, δm.This seems to be a very realistic assumption: In rural areas in India (at least in the two states we are studying in this paper), literate women (who can run for
9Pande (2003) develops an alternative model to analyze the possible impact of the reservation of a share of seats to SC/ST in state legislative assemblies in India. The argument is that can- didates are fielded by political parties, where minorities are under-represented relative to their share in the population, which in turn leads to an under-representation of SC/ST among legisla- tors, in the absence of reservation. The present model seems better suited to the description of local democracy, and avoids assumptions on the objective functions of political parties. 10Women’s and men’s distributions can overlap—that is, we can have M