Political dynasties and electoral outcomes in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Political dynasties, a salient feature of the electoral politics in many electoral democracies, have critical governance implications. However, careful empirical estimates of the dynasty premium in Indian elections and explanation of their constituency-level demand side (voters) and supply side (political parties) determinants are absent. To fill this gap, we analyze the candidate-level (N = 8251) data on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and find that a dynastic candidate is a significant 13% more likely to win and has a significant 18%–20% higher vote share than a non-dynastic candidate. This result is robust to consideration of an alternative dynasty variable as outcome, usage of alternative indicators of candidate criminality as controls, and a procedure of deducing bias due to selection on unobservables from selection on observables. In the constituency-level analyses, having a dynastic incumbent legislator in fray and dynasts’ relative wealth increases the probability of a dynastic winner and a more competitive election given the dynastic incumbent reduces it. Voter dissatisfaction, dynasts’ relative wealth, reserved constituency, and given a dynastic incumbent, higher political competition reduce voter preference for dynasts, whereas dynastic entrenchment and dynastic incumbent reduce it. The dynastic incumbent, dynasts’ relative wealth, and voter dissatisfaction significantly increase political parties’ preferences for dynasts.