“Muscle”: Essays on Criminality, Elections and Democracy in India Milan Vaishnav
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The Merits of Money and “Muscle”: Essays on Criminality, Elections and Democracy in India Milan Vaishnav Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Science COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Milan Vaishnav All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The Merits of Money and “Muscle”: Essays on Criminality, Elections and Democracy in India Milan Vaishnav This dissertation seeks to understand how democratic elections can coexist with a significant number of politicians implicated in criminal wrongdoing. Specifically, it seeks answers to three questions. Why do parties nominate candidates with criminal backgrounds? Why do voters vote for them? And what does their proliferation mean for democratic accountability? To address these questions, I draw on a wide body of quantitative and qualitative evidence from India, the world’s largest democracy. I argue that parties are attracted to criminal politicians because they have access to financial resources that allow them to function as self-financing candidates. Whereas the prevailing consensus in political economy suggests that voters support “bad politicians” because they lack adequate information on candidate quality, I develop an alternate theory that suggests well-informed voters can display rational behavior by voting for such candidates. Specifically, in contexts where social divisions are highly salient, voters often desire a representative who they perceive can protect group-based interests most credibly. In such settings, criminality can serve as a useful signal of a candidate’s credibility. As a result, parties selectively field criminal candidates in those areas where social divisions are most pronounced. The implications of this study are far reaching because they suggest that information about a candidate’s criminality is not only available, but actually is central to understanding the viability of his candidacy. Thus, there are circumstances in which “bad politicians” can in fact be compatible with democratic accountability. Empirically, this dissertation makes use of a unique, author-constructed database of affidavits submitted by more than 60,000 candidates contesting state and national elections between 2003 and 2009. This dataset contains detailed information on candidates’ financial and criminal records from 37 elections, which I analyze using state-of- the-art quantitative methods. I complement these quantitative analyses with qualitative fieldwork conducted in three states, including an in-depth exploration of the case of Bihar, a state in north India. Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. vi Part I: Chapters ......................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Overview ................................................................................................................................. 2 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 1.2 Motivation .................................................................................................................................. 6 1.3 Preview of findings .................................................................................................................... 7 1.4 Theoretical framework ............................................................................................................... 9 1.5 Research design and methodology ........................................................................................... 12 1.6 Chapter summaries ................................................................................................................... 19 1.7 Major implications ................................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2: The Market for Criminality: Money, Muscle and Elections in India .................................... 29 2.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 30 2.2 Political selection ..................................................................................................................... 36 2.3 Contextualizing the puzzle ....................................................................................................... 39 2.4 Criminality, money and comparative advantage ...................................................................... 41 2.5 Data and measurement ............................................................................................................. 49 2.6 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 58 2.7 Robustness ................................................................................................................................ 73 2.8 Alternative measures of wealth ................................................................................................ 79 2.9 Member of Parliament candidate data ...................................................................................... 82 2.10 Does criminality improve electoral prospects? ........................................................................ 84 2.11 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................. 86 Chapter 3: Doing Good While Doing Bad: Why Indian Voters Support Criminal Politicians .............. 93 3.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 94 3.2 Information, democracy and accountability ............................................................................. 99 3.3 Information deficit hypothesis and bad politicians ................................................................ 100 3.4 An alternative account: identity politics, credibility and criminality ..................................... 106 3.5 Elaborating the criminality-credibility connection in India ................................................... 114 3.6 The case of Bihar.................................................................................................................... 117 3.7 Case study evidence ............................................................................................................... 129 3.8 Mokama .................................................................................................................................. 132 3.9 Danapur .................................................................................................................................. 145 3.10 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 155 i Chapter 4: Social Divisions, Credibility and Criminality: Political Selection in India ........................ 159 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 160 4.2 Political selection of bad politicians....................................................................................... 168 4.3 Identity, criminality and political selection in India .............................................................. 171 4.4 Research design ...................................................................................................................... 173 4.5 Data ........................................................................................................................................ 183 4.6 Is criminality among politicians lower in reserved constituencies? ....................................... 186 4.7 Estimates using multilevel modeling ..................................................................................... 188 4.8 Addressing endogeneity concerns .......................................................................................... 193 4.9 Testing extensions of the argument ........................................................................................ 205 4.10 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 217 Chapter 5: Conclusion........................................................................................................................... 227 5.1 Summing up ........................................................................................................................... 228 5.2 Scope conditions and external validity................................................................................... 228 5.3 Looking ahead ........................................................................................................................ 231 Part II: Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 238 Part III: Appendices .............................................................................................................................. 253 Appendix A: Construction of the Affidavit Database ..........................................................................