Inequality and voting among deprived ethnic groups: evidence from India

Bulutgil, H. Zeynep; Prasad, Neeraj

doi:10.1080/17457289.2019.1624555

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…A longstanding literature in comparative politics shows that socio-political cleavages and their interaction with each other influences nonviolent political mobilization such as party formation in their argument and main dependent variable, which is the severity of riots, measured as casualties, rather than the incidence and frequency of riots. and voting as well as violent mobilization such as civil wars and communal conflict (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967;Lijphart, 1977;Chandra, 2007;Dunning and Harrison, 2010;Cederman et al, 2011;Gubler and Selway, 2012;Hillesund, 2017;Huber and Suryanarayan, 2016;Houle et al, 2018;Higashijima and Houle, 2017;Bulutgil and Prasad, 2020;Tudor and Ziegfeld, 2019). The logic of these arguments is that when social cleavages such as ethno-religious divisions cross-cut rather than overlap with other divisions such as economic ones, ethno-religious divisions become less visible and intergroup relations are less polarized.…”

Section: Inequality Grievances and Riotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This otherwise vibrant literature largely ignores the potential effect of economic inequality within or between groups on communal riots. 4 The lack of interest in inequality is surprising given that existing studies using data from India and elsewhere have amassed significant empirical evidence indicating that within- and between-group inequality influence non-violent political mobilization in the form of voting and party system formation (Huber & Suryanarayan, 2016; Dunning & Harrison, 2010; Bulutgil & Prasad, 2020; Houle et al, 2018). Our article establishes a link between these studies and the study of political violence by showing that economic inequality within and between ethnic groups also influences violent political mobilization in the form of riots.…”

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Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

Bulutgil

Prasad

2022

Journal of Peace Research

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How does inequality within and between ethno-religious groups influence the likelihood and frequency of communal riots? Using evidence from India, this article finds that low within-group and high between-group inequality dampens the likelihood and frequency of communal riots. Theoretically, the article suggests that the instrumental logic, which posits that ethnonationalist politicians use violence to stoke ethnic cleavages and mobilize support, best accounts for this finding. We argue that to be politically competitive, ethnonationalist politicians need their supporters to identify foremost with their ethnic identity. When inequality within groups is high and/or inequality between groups is low, citizens are less likely to focus on ethnicity as their primary identity. In such contexts, politicians may use communal riots to improve their electoral prospects by reinforcing the salience of ethnicity. Empirically, the article relies on a time-series cross-district analysis of inequality and Hindu–Muslim riots in India to test the instrumental argument against theoretical alternatives. To illustrate the causal logic, the article also uses the analysis of a communal riot that occurred in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Analyzing three aspects of the riot – background conditions, timing, targets of propaganda – we evaluate the different predictions of the instrumental argument. The article concludes with the suggestion that communal riots are distinct from cases of mass violence – such as civil wars, genocide, and ethnic cleansing – and could be conceptualized, along with other types of small-scale political violence, as a separate class of events with their own internal logic.

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Section: Inequality Grievances and Riotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

Bulutgil

Prasad

2022

Journal of Peace Research

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“…22.The original sources report income for approximately the upper quartile, while the remainder of the data are extrapolated. Bulutgil and Prasad (2020) show that high within-group inequality limits the success of ethnic parties in India. Unfortunately, we lack data on income by linguistic group and therefore cannot account for this argument in the analysis.…”

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Nationalism, Class, and Status: How Nationalists Use Policy Offers and Group Appeals to Attract a New Electorate

Howe

Szöcsik

Zuber

2021

Comparative Political Studies

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How do nationalist parties attract votes? This article develops a novel supply-side explanation centered on status, arguing that nationalists succeed by combining group appeals to the nation with policy promises to improve the nation’s political and cultural status and the socio-economic status of its median member. Drawing on several original datasets, this expectation is tested on Imperial Austria in 1907, where multiple nationalist parties competed in first-time mass elections. We find that group appeals to the nation and promises to improve its political and cultural status resonate very well with agricultural workers, whose economic sector was declining, but not with industrial workers, whose sector was on the rise. By contrast, offering social policy helps nationalists among industrial workers, but less clearly so among agricultural workers. This article shows that nationalist mobilization is not a mere distraction from class politics; rather, the politics of nationalism, class, and status are closely intertwined.

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Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnic Inequality: Findings from India

Chakrabarti

2022

SSRN Journal

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Inequality and voting among deprived ethnic groups: evidence from India

Cited by 3 publications

References 36 publications

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

Inequality, elections, and communal riots in India

Nationalism, Class, and Status: How Nationalists Use Policy Offers and Group Appeals to Attract a New Electorate

Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnic Inequality: Findings from India

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