Political inequality [electronic resource] : effects and remedies

Although political equality is a normative ideal that some societies have sought to achieve at some times, all societies are to varying degrees politically unequal. Scholars have argued that political inequality has pernicious effects on a number of socio-economic outcomes, such as health, education and income. Political inequality can be rectified, and many societies have attempted to do so. Systematic analysis of the causes and effects of, and remedies for, political inequality is lacking, however. The three studies that form the core of this dissertation examine an effect of political inequality and the efficacy of a common remedy for it. The dissertation also lays out the beginnings of an experimental study on a potential cause of inequality, and a broader strategy to measure the phenomenon comprehensively and across the globe. Together, this corpus is intended to catalyze research on political inequality. The three core chapters examine the following questions: (1) What are the effects of malapportionment in parliamentary systems? Malapportionment in parliamentary systems doubly penalizes people from large constituencies by underrepresenting them in the legislature and in the executive. The literature on malapportionment has not noticed the latter effect. I present a simple satisficing-based theory of the government formation process, which predicts that people in larger constituencies will be underrepresented in the executive as members of the executive are drawn from a malapportioned legislature, and as formateurs are less likely to invite representatives from these constituencies to join the executive due to their higher price. I test and confirm hypotheses from this theory using a new panel dataset on elections and government formation in India's states, from 1977-2007. I use archival research to show that malapportionment in India was caused by reasons exogenous to state politics, and fixed effects and an instrumental variable to deal with remaining endogeneity. I find that a two standard deviation increase in relative constituency size is associated with a 14.5% fall in the probability of that constituency's representative being in the cabinet. (2) Do electoral quotas for women alter women's chances of winning elections after they are withdrawn? I answer this question by examining an unusual natural experiment in India in which randomly chosen seats in local legislatures are set aside for women for one election at a time. Using data from Mumbai, I find that the probability of a woman winning office conditional on the constituency being reserved for women in the previous election is approximately five times the probability of a woman winning office if the constituency was not reserved for women previously. I also explore tentative evidence on the mechanisms by which reservations affect women's ability to win elections. The data suggest that reservations work in part by introducing into politics women who are able to win elections after reservations are withdrawn and by allowing parties to "learn" that women can win elections. (3) Do electoral quotas for lower castes (arguably, a group comparable to race) continue to improve their electoral performance and socio-economic outcomes after the quotas are removed? This question is important because, like affirmative action programs, electoral quotas are justified as temporary measures used to right historical wrongs. I use a discontinuity in the assignment of quotas for lower castes in India's state legislatures in the 1960s to help answer this question, and find that quotas boost the chances of a lower caste winning office over the subsequent 25 years to a very small, statistically significant but substantively insignificant degree. They have no lasting effect on socio-economic outcomes.

Keywords: Political Science.
Advisor: Laitin David D. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Díaz Cayeros Alberto advisor. Thesis advisor
Rodden Jonathan advisor. Thesis advisor
Weinstein Jeremy M. advisor. Thesis advisor