ITS Workshop: "Power to the Parents? Representation and Interest Aggregation in Delhi"

Wednesday, October 27th, 12:30-1:30 PM EST

Emmerich Davies, Assistant Professor of International Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education  

Title: Power to the Parents? Representation and Interest Aggregation in Delhi

Registration link: https://forms.gle/AnvoByCuLmAvwuTb8

With rapid urbanization, urban governments are coming under pressure to provide high quality services to diverse populations. How can states best do this? Many governments are implementing reforms successful in rural areas such as decentralizing the provision of services and using community-driven development programs. There is concern that decentralization and CDD programs can result in elite capture as elites are best able to mobilize and capture the benefits of decentralization. We gain purchase on these problems by studying a series of reforms in Delhi that decentralized the administration of discretionary school-level budgets to elected bodies of parents. We find that parents have preferences for representatives that are substantially more educated than them and discriminate against Muslims. Parents act on these preferences when given the opportunity to elect SMC members by electing higher status parents. The paper contributes to our understanding of elite capture in decentralized services. This paper was co-authored with Ashwini Deshapande, Professor of Economics, Ashoka University, and Parushya, Research Manager, IFMR-LEAD.

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