These days, I work mainly on my dissertation, which addresses questions of distributive politics, patronage, and voting in India. Do politicians buy votes or buy turnout with public resources like roads and schools? Do voters in India make decisions based on economic growth and material gains, or do identity politics reign?
To address these questions, I am gathering data on the distribution of public resources and public opinion in India, and I will return to India in early 2010 to conduct fieldwork in the state of Karnataka.
Current Projects
Partisanship, Political Polarization and State Budget Outcomes: The Case of Higher Education (With Luciana Dar)
We argue that partisanship matters in policy areas where the distribution of policy positions do not fall clearly on the left-right political spectrum. However, these effects are influenced by political polarization and by economic conditions.
Do Governments Spend More to Compensate for Openness?
Do governments spend more compensate citizens for increased risk brought about by economic openness? I replicate and extend the arguments of Rodrik's seminal paper on why more open economies have bigger governments. I find that Rodrik's results are sensitive to how he treats missing values. Using an updated data source, moreover, renders his original findings insignificant. Statutory trade openness does, however, have some positive effect on government spending.
How Does Capital Mobility Impact Policy?
This paper investigates the relationship between international capital mobility and domestic policies. I ask whether capital mobility straightforwardly leads all governments to compete and offer more business-friendly policies, or whether countries that are initially unattractive to investors might act differently. An unattractive country might offer more generous incentives to business in order to compensate for their weaknesses, or they might find their disadvantage overwhelming and give up, offering fewer business-friendly policies. I test three hypotheses on this relationship, using two measures of policy outcomes. I find robust and significant evidence that the more-attractive countries compete while the less-attractive countries stagnate.
Does Globalization Affect Electoral Systems? Evidence and Theory on Three Hypotheses (With Ronald Rogowski)
Our analysis of the panel evidence for the set of all democracies, 1972 to the present, leads us to the tentative conclusion that globalization does affect electoral systems, and it leads - somewhat paradoxically - to greater pressure to adopt or retain majoritarian electoral systems. To the extent that PR reduces protectionist pressures - and the evidence for that effect, particularly in more recent years, now seems fragile - that potential benefit is overwhelmed by other factors, including likely the more pro-competitive policies that SMD systems encourage. This last effect of course remains conjectural, but we advance plausible causal linkages.