Discussants:
Jennifer Bussell, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley
Gilles Verniers, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of TCPD, Ashoka University
The discussion will be moderated by Rahul Verma, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research.
The full talk will be streamed through Facebook live on CPR’s Facebook page.
About the Book
Jennifer Bussell, in Clients and Constituents, looks at an under examined form of distributive politics – constituency service. Breaking away from the traditional narrative of partisan targeting and broker-mediated distribution of benefits, she finds that a direct relationship of public service often forms between high-level legislators and individual constituents. The necessity to surpass local intermediaries, she argues, is produced by the biased allocation of resources at the local level. Drawing on her own extensive qualitative fieldwork, cross-national data and an experimental audit study, her book takes a fresh look at democratic accountability in patronage democracies.
About the Series
The CPR-TCPD Dialogues on Indian Politics brings together academicians, policy and political practitioners, and civil society actors to grapple with important social and political issues in India. It provides a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan commentary to strengthen public discourse on politics in India. This dialogue series is an effort to understand the changing dynamics of Indian political parties, the impact of new and emerging social movements and the use of new instruments of mobilisation in our polity.
The CPR-TCPD Dialogues is curated by the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and the Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD) at Ashoka University. Founded in 1973, CPR is one of India’s leading think tanks, providing rigorous policy research on a variety of issues. Founded in 2015, TCPD is among India’s most well-respected institutions working with political data, providing data-driven research, policy work and journalism on India’s political life by producing and disseminating in open access scientifically collected and treated political data. The CPR-TCPD Dialogues leverages the unique strengths of these two institutions to provide rigorous and innovative commentary on India’s social and political challenges.
Please RSVP at president.cpr@cprindia.org. The seating at the venue can accommodate up to 60 people on a first come first serve basis.
