Political Economy Workshop (Gov 3007)

Presentations given by Joey Neggers and Naor Ben-Yehoyada First, Yusuf Neggers will present his paper "Identity and Electoral Processes: Evidence from India," with Chiara Superti as discussant. Second, Naor Ben-Yehoyada will conduct a brainstorming session on joint work with Vito Pipitone and Raul Sanchez de la Sierra. Abstract for “Identity and Electoral Processes: Evidence from India” Upholding the integrity of elections is especially difficult in the developing world, where administrative capacity and institutional strength tend to be weaker and electoral fraud and violence are not uncommon. While the impacts of technological advances in electoral monitoring and voting technologies have been extensively studied, the potential importance of the remaining interactions between election officials and voters on election day is not as well understood. Even in the absence of improper behavior by officials, voter decisions may be affected by the presence of officers who are more or less similar to them along certain dimensions of their identity. To gain greater insight into the actions of officials and voters on election day, I leverage an existing government policy in the state of Bihar in India, where government employees are randomly assigned to manage polling stations on election day. I determine that the presence of polling station officers of certain caste or religious identities shift vote shares toward the political parties traditionally associated with those groups. In an attempt to shed light on the causal mechanisms underlying these results, I will soon conduct surveys of voters and polling station officers about their experiences during the 2014 assembly elections.