3 charts challenge lazy thinking on voter turnout and its link to literacy & urbanisation

India is known for a fairly high election turnout, but who turns out to vote in India, and why? In our last article, we discussed how constituency size, organisational networks, and social pressures may play a role in influencing voter turnout. Two other factors are commonly cited as having an impact...

It’s a myth that 2014 election was exceptional in the vote share of winning candidates

Elections to the Lok Sabha are highly competitive. Indian politicians win with smaller margins than their counterparts in other countries with a similar electoral system, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. In a first-past-the-post electoral system, a candidate needs 50 per cent plus one vote to...

Why voters don’t turn up in larger numbers in Lok Sabha elections – all politics is local

Historically, national elections in India have had an average voter turnout of about 60 per cent, but there have been massive differences in turnout both across India and across different elections. Voter turnout is important for the legitimacy of democratic elections, and Indian elections are known...

Political parties dominate India’s national elections, not candidates

A common perception regarding Indian politics is that it is the candidate, and not the party, who wins the elections. This makes it important for parties to pick the “right” candidates, and parties in India do spend enormous effort in local consultations and identity arithmetic while choosing who to...

There are very few BJP strongholds or Congress bastions in India. Data shows why

An important ongoing discussion in some political circles in India is whether the Election Commission should limit public access to the so-called Form 20 data, which reports the exact number of votes that each candidate receives in each polling booth in an election. The Form 20 data has been made available...

This data shows why Indian MPs don’t truly represent their people

As the national elections of 2019 draw close, and incumbents prepare to face voters again, a straightforward question follows: how many people does a Member of Parliament really represent? On average, an Indian parliamentarian today represents constituencies with more than 1.5 million or 15 lakh eligible...

Gender-Discriminatory Laws and Women’s Economic Agency

Recent years have seen widespread advances in women’s legal rights in many countries. In other places, restrictions on women’s autonomy remain entrenched. This study explores cross-country patterns in the association between gender-discriminatory legislation and various indicators of women’s economic...

India: A Contradictory Record

This chapter provides a review of the role of women in Indian politics, with a focus on female legislators. It begins with an account of the entry of women into politics in the early 20th century. Second, it looks at the gradual increase in the number of women MPs and the barriers they have faced. The...

Kinship in Indian Politics: Dynasties, nepotism and imagined families

While kinship is among the basic organizing principles of all human life, its role in and implications for international politics and relations have been subject to surprisingly little exploration in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This volume is the first volume aimed at thinking systematically...

Benefits and Pitfalls of Google Scholar

Google Scholar (GS) is an important tool that faculty, administrators, and external reviewers use to evaluate the scholarly impact of candidates for jobs, tenure, and promotion. This article highlights both the benefits of GS—including the reliability and consistency of its citation counts and its platform...

Comparative Analysis for Theory Development: Reflections on a Study of Women’s Empowerment

Methodological texts about comparative work have focused overwhelmingly on controlled comparisons aimed at causal inference. To show the range of possible goals and approaches, this piece reflects on our own choices while studying the state and women’s empowerment in Norway, Japan, and the United States....

Studying Indian Politics with Large-scale Data: Indian Election Data 1961–today

There has been a major shift in how Indian politics is studied, as large-scale data has become easier to access and analyze. In this research note, we describe some useful techniques and tools used for creating and merging large-scale datasets. We also introduce two datasets: constituency-level datasets...

Social Justice through Inclusion: The Consequences of Electoral Quotas in India

Across the world, governments design and implement policies with the explicit goal of promoting social justice. But can such institutions change entrenched social norms? And what effects should we expect from differently designed policies? Francesca R. Jensenius' Social Justice through Inclusion...

Caught in the Act but not Punished: on Elite Rule of Law and Deterrence

Most literature on criminal deterrence in law, economics, and criminology assumes that people who are caught for a crime will be punished. The literature focuses on how the size of sanctions and probability of being caught affect criminal behavior. However, in many countries entire groups of people are...

A sign of backwardness? Where dynastic leaders are elected in India

Competing inequalities? On the intersection of gender and ethnicity in candidate nominations in Indian elections

Quotas for women and ethnic minorities are implemented to increase diversity in political institutions, but, as they usually target only one group at a time, they may end up increasing the inclusion of one under-represented group at the cost of another. Recent work has emphasized the institutional underpinnings...

The inclusive effects of electoral quotas

Caste quotas in politics and development outcomes

Electoral Quotas as a Tool for Fighting Exclusion and Discrimination

Socioeconomic Profile of India’s Old Electoral Constituencies, 1971-2001