Applied Microeconomics Early Stage (CAGE - AMES)

Title: From Registration to Representation: Mobilising Women Voters and Politicians in India - with Pamela Campa (SITE, SSE) and Jonathan Lehne (SITE, SSE)

Abstract: Women remain underrepresented among political leaders and, in some contexts, also among voters, raising the possibility of feedback loops between different forms of political participation. In this project, we examine whether exposure to different types of female politicians increases women's political participation, both as voters and as political candidates. We study this question in India, the world's largest democracy, where women remain underrepresented in higher-level politics, while affirmative action ensures female representation at the local level. We assemble a novel dataset from Uttar Pradesh, India, combining administrative data across election types and electoral cycles, including information on 140 million individual voters, 500,000 local political candidates, and turnout and electoral outcomes across 150,000 polling stations. The richness of the data allows us to make three contributions to the literature. First, we distinguish women's decisions to register to vote from their decisions to turn out. Second, we study the effect of women's political candidacy rather than their electoral victories. Third, we compare the effects of different types of female politicians within the same setting. We employ three identification strategies that exploit plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to female politicians. Our findings highlight how the effects of female political representation depend on the pathways through which women enter politics, shedding light on the potential for self-reinforcing dynamics in women's political participation.