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CID Working Paper No. 147, July 2007

Parochial Politics: Ethnic Preferences and Politician Corruption

Abhijit V. Banerjee and Rohini Pande

Abstract 

This paper examines how increased voter ethnicization, defined as a greater preference for the party representing one's ethnic group, affects politician quality. If politics is characterized by incomplete policy commitment, then ethnicization reduces average winner quality for the pro-majority party with the opposite true for the minority party. The effect increases with greater numerical dominance of the majority (and so social homogeneity). Empirical evidence from a survey on politician corruption that we conducted in North India is remarkably consistent with our theoretical predictions.

Keywords: ethnic voting, corruption, India

JEL codes: P16, O12

Download the paper in PDF format

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Last revised 07/18/2007