Stabbed in the back? Mandated political representation and murders
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Stabbed in the back? Mandated political representation and murders Victoire Girard1,2 Received: 12 December 2018 / Accepted: 3 October 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas coincides with an increase in the number of murders targeting members of the lower castes. The analysis of these administrative crime data is backed up by the complementary analysis of a nationally representative household survey. Households’ answers reveal an increase in inter-caste tensions and discrimination during the operation of caste quotas. The results are consistent with a backlash against electoral quotas (due to sabotage or retaliation), and inconsistent with other interpretations (such as empowerment).
1 Introduction The terrible thing about fairness is that while (almost) all of us love the principle, it is difficult to agree on how to achieve it. Take the example of affirmative action. While the concern for fairness motivates its implementation, any particular affirmative action is controversial, and people outside its target can feel unfairly treated (Fryer and Loury 2005). In fact, a nascent body of experimental literature shows that implementing affirmative action may induce a backlash (see for example Gangadharan et al. 2016). Such a reaction automatically undermines the benefits of the affirmative action for its beneficiaries. Is there any evidence of such backlash outside of laboratory experiments? The case of India offers an ideal quasi-natural experiment to document whether affirmative action can be vitiated by backlash. Caste still is a source of taste-based discrimination in India (Banerjee and Gupta 2015), while a constitutional amendment
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Victoire Girard [email protected]
1
Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFICA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus de Carcavelos, Portugal
2
LEO, University of Orléans, CNRS, Orléans, France
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V. Girard
enacted in 1993 reserves a quota of seats in local elections for members of lower castes. Transposing to castes the identity theory of Akerlof and Kranton (2010), if one’s caste identity affects one’s utility function, then the empowerment of members of lower castes thanks to the affirmative action may carry a cost for members of higher castes. This cost could lead some members of higher castes to seek to limit the empowerment of members of lower castes, potentially through violence. Whether such violence may follow electoral quotas is a crucial question. More than 100 countries have electoral quotas for women and/or minority groups (Krook and O’Brien 2010), and the visibility inherent in electoral quotas may exacerbate the risk of a backlash. My identification strategy relies on the times when electoral quotas are implemented bot
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