Participatory Democracy in Action: Survey Evidence from South India
基于南印度家庭和村庄调查数据，研究谁参加地方选举政府召集的村民会议，以及这些会议如何影响福利项目的受益者选择。
We use household and village survey data from South India to examine who participates in village meetings called by elected local governments, and what e¤ect these meetings have on bene…ciary selection for welfare programs. Our main …nding is that members of socially and economically disadvantaged groups, speci…cally landless and low caste individuals, are both more likely to attend these meetings and be chosen as bene…ciaries in villages which have village meetings. Acknowledgements We are grateful to Lupin Rahman, Radu Ban, Siddarth Sharma and Jillian Waid for research assistance, and the IMRB sta ¤ for conducting the survey. We are grateful to the World Bank’s Research Committee and the South Asia Rural Development Unit for …nancial support. The opinions in the paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily re‡ect the points of view of the World Bank or its member countries.