Suchergebnisse

In many developing countries the rural poor often depend on patrons to act as brokers in order to get public provision from the government. The broker facilitates provision in return for securing peasants' votes for politicians. Yet, low bargaining power of peasants allows patrons to appropriate public resources for themselves. I propose increasing peasants' bargaining power by connecting them to markets outside their village. Making use of a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway in Pakistan, I find public provision to be significantly higher in connected villages when compared to those which are isolated. Moreover, I find that the beneficial impact of connectivity is felt most strongly by the lower classes, who are most vulnerable to exploitation when isolated

This paper explains inferior quality of governance in less affluent countries in terms of a patron–client relationship between political parties and a large section of voters. The client voters resort to strategic voting, which is shown to be contagious, leading to suboptimal effort choice by the incumbent government and a higher probability for the incumbent to remain in power. The possibility of competition between the incumbent and the opposition, in terms of expenditure on political propaganda, actually helps the incumbent and reinforces these results.

In many developing countries the rural poor often depend on patrons to act as brokers in order to get public provision from the government. The broker facilitates provision in return for securing peasants' votes for politicians. Yet, low bargaining power of peasants allows patrons to appropriate public resources for themselves. I propose increasing peasants' bargaining power by connecting them to markets outside their village. Making use of a natural experiment found in the construction of a motorway in Pakistan, I find public provision to be significantly higher in connected villages when compared to those which are isolated. Moreover, I find that the beneficial impact of connectivity is felt most strongly by the lower classes, who are most vulnerable to exploitation when isolated.