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ID: 175293

Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India / Kapur, Devesh; Dasgupta, Aditya

Kapur, Devesh	Journal Article
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Government programs often fail on the ground because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. Prominent explanations for poor implementation emphasize bureaucratic rent-seeking and capture. This article documents a different pathology that we term bureaucratic overload: local bureaucrats are often heavily under-resourced relative to their responsibilities. We advance a two-step theory explaining why bureaucratic overload is detrimental to implementation as well as why politicians under-invest in local bureaucracy, emphasizing a lack of electoral incentives. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries that measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that (i) officials with fewer resources are worse at implementing rural development programs, plausibly because they are unable to allocate enough time to managerial tasks and (ii) fewer resources are provided in administrative units where political responsibility for implementation is less clear. The findings shed light on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.

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India ; Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload ; Rural Development Officials

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ID: 154546

When do antipoverty programs reduce violence? India's rural employment guarantee and maoist conflict / Dasgupta, Aditya ; Kapur, Devesh ; Gawande, Kishore

Kapur, Devesh	Journal Article
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Theory and extensive evidence connect poverty and underdevelopment to civil conflict yet evidence on the impact of development programs on violence is surprisingly mixed. To break this impasse, we exploit a within-country policy experiment to examine the conditions under which antipoverty programs reduce violence. The roll-out of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme caused a large long-run reduction in Maoist conflict violence, as measured with an original data set based on local-language press sources. These pacifying effects were not uniform, however, but overwhelmingly concentrated in districts with sufficient pre-existing local state capacity to implement the program effectively. The results demonstrate the potential for anti-poverty programs to mitigate violent civil conflict by improving livelihoods, but also highlight the crucial role of state capacity in shaping these effects.

Key Words

Maoist Conflict ; Antipoverty Programs ; Reduce Violence ; India's Rural Employment Guarantee

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