Clients and Constituents

Abstract

This book provides a theoretical and empirical examination of constituency service in developing countries. The predominant view of distributive politics in “patronage democracies” emphasizes the partisan targeting of pork and clientelism. In contrast, this book demonstrates that high-level legislators in India and other contexts often provide direct, nonpartisan assistance to individual constituents. Under what conditions do they provide constituency service, rather than engage in partisan bias? The book shows that the uneven character of access to services at the local level—often because of biased allocation on the part of local intermediaries—generates demand for help from higher-level officials, and also creates incentives for those politicians to bypass intermediaries by providing direct assistance. It draws on elite and citizen surveys, interviews, qualitative shadowing, and experiments to explore the dynamics of both the demand for constituency service and its supply. The book’s findings highlight the potential for an underappreciated form of democratic accountability, one that is however rooted in the character of patronage-based politics.