Suchergebnisse

This paper offers a novel illustration of the political economy of religion by examining the impact of religious elites on development. We compile a unique database on holy Muslim shrines across Pakistani Punjab and construct a historical panel of literacy spanning over a century (1901–2011). Using the 1977 military takeover as a universal shock that gave control over public goods to politicians, our difference-in-differences analysis shows that areas with a greater concentration of shrines experienced a substantially retarded growth in literacy after the coup. Our results suggest that the increase in average literacy rate would have been higher by 13% in the post-coup period in the absence of shrine influence. We directly address the selection concern that shrines might be situated in areas predisposed to lower literacy expansion. Finally, we argue that the coup devolved control over public goods to local politicians, and shrine elites, being more averse to education since it undermines their power, suppressed its expansion in shrine-dense areas.

This paper empirically examines the impact of religious shrines on development. Compiling a unique database covering the universe of shrines across Pakistani Punjab, we explore whether the presence of holy Muslim shrines helps to explain regional variation in literacy rates. Our results demonstrate that the presence of shrines adversely affects literacy only in regions where shrine-related families have a direct political influence. Shrines in these regions represent the confluence of three resources—religion, land and politics—that together constitute a powerful structural inequality with potentially adverse consequences for development. We also probe the determinants of political selection, and find that shrines considered important in the British colonial assessment were more likely to select into politics in post-partition Punjab. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; PSSP ; DSGD; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

We examine how political participation and political competition are shaped by two class-based extensions of the franchise in 20th-century India. Creating a new dataset of district level political outcomes between 1921 and 1957, we find that the partial franchise extension of 1935 resulted in significantly lower incumbency advantage, while the institution of universal adult suffrage in 1950 resulted in increased candidacy. Both these franchise extensions resulted in decreased voter turnout rates, suggesting that newly enfranchised voters are less engaged in the political process.