Determinants of Redistributive Politics: An Empirical Analysis of Land Reforms in West Bengal, India

Abstract

We investigate political determinants of land reform implementation in the Indian state of West Bengal. Using a village panel spanning 1974-98, we do not find evidence supporting the hypothesis that these can be explained by differences in redistributive ideologies of the Left Front and the Congress party, i.e., their relative control of local governments. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the role of opportunism (re-election concerns) and electoral competition.

Local Funds and Political Competition: Evidence from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

“…The results for all the seats echoes the results obtained by Bardhan and Mookherjee (2010) in the context of land reforms in West Bengal. Clearly, if a party is very weak in a particular area or very strong, a party may not find it optimal to influence fund allocations to those areas.…”

“…This paper is similar in spirit to Bardhan and Mookherjee (2010) in so far as we estimate a similar inverted U shaped relationship between political variables and the outcome. However, the di §erential relationship within close elections is unexplored in their analysis.…”

“…Thus, various 5 Needless to say, this is contextual, as for many outcome variables, the exclusion criterion may not be met if political competition a §ects them directly. While fund allocations may not be completely demand driven, it is implausible to think that they are random.…”

“…However, recent evidence finds that political opportunism can often dictate how policies get implemented. For example, Bardhan and Mookherjee (2010), in the context of West Bengal in India, finds that areas which are subject to close legislative assembly elections often see better implementation of land reforms. They find that the relation between implementation and political strength (in terms of seats) is an inverted U, with parties not caring about policy implementation if they have a very low or very high representation in an assembly constituency.…”

“…5 In section 2, we describe the institutional setting of funds allocation across administrative units and how they are related to the local political structure. Section 3 provides description of the data.…”