Bureaucratic Norms and State Capacity in India

Mangla, Akshay

doi:10.1525/as.2015.55.5.882

Cited by 55 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…While rent-seeking and capture are undeniably important forces that can and do exist simultaneously with bureaucratic overload, we argue that quite often, independent of these factors, bureaucrats simply lack the resources needed to do their jobs effectively because of institutional and electoral conditions that discourage socially beneficial investments in local bureaucratic resources. Our findings link with work which suggests that clear oversight of bureaucrats by politicians (Gulzar and Pasquale 2017;Raffler 2018;Williams 2017), as well as managerial autonomy and organizational capacity (Mangla 2015;Pepinsky, Pierskalla, and Sacks 2017;Rasul and Rogger 2017), are critical for bureaucratic performance.…”

supporting

confidence: 76%

The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

Dasgupta

Kapur

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Government programs often fail on the ground because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. Prominent explanations for poor implementation emphasize bureaucratic rent-seeking and capture. This article documents a different pathology that we term bureaucratic overload: local bureaucrats are often heavily under-resourced relative to their responsibilities. We advance a two-step theory explaining why bureaucratic overload is detrimental to implementation as well as why politicians under-invest in local bureaucracy, emphasizing a lack of electoral incentives. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries that measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that (i) officials with fewer resources are worse at implementing rural development programs, plausibly because they are unable to allocate enough time to managerial tasks and (ii) fewer resources are provided in administrative units where political responsibility for implementation is less clear. The findings shed light on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.

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supporting

confidence: 76%

The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

Dasgupta

Kapur

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…However, information supplied to parents to assist their school choice decisions is often found either too scant or overwhelmingly encyclopedic (Garcia 2011), which has especially put those parents with lower literacy into disadvantage (Delale-O'Connor 2018). On the other hand, decentralization reforms are more likely to foster fruitful ties between schools, communities, and government when information is shared in a collegial and collaborative manner, rather than government being dictating and coercive (Pradhan et al 2014;Mangla 2015).…”

Section: The Challenges Of Information and Its Deliverymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making accountability work in basic education: reforms, challenges and the role of the government

Yan

2019

Policy Design and Practice

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Accountability has been increasingly emphasized as a key to improving the quality and inclusiveness of basic education. However, reforms around the world inspired by this line of thinking have only generated lackluster results. The paper examines the gaps between theoretical expectations and the actual practices of individual accountability measures, and explores ways to bridge them. It argues that the more fundamental shortcomings of these reforms are the result of a partial understanding of the concept of accountability, in which the role of the government is either neglected or very narrowly emphasized. It concludes that government stewardship is vital in tackling these informational, incentive, and capacity challenges facing the sector and making education accountability reforms more coherent, coordinated, and practical.

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“…In Kerala in particular, human capital in the form of health and education was more evenly distributed than anywhere else in India. Mangla (2015) provides another subnational example, but focusing at the level of state bureaucracies rather than elected local governments (which in fact lack their own bureaucracies for policy design and implementation). He compares two states, Himachal Pradesh (HP) and…”

Section: Pose the Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Theories of Governance and Development: How Does India’s Experience Fit?

Singh

2019

SSRN Journal

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This paper takes on the apparent paradox of India's combination of durable democracy, capable bureaucracy, but a deficient development trajectory. It begins by outlining the nature of the problem. Then it summarizes and compares some significant approaches to drawing connections from governance institutions to development outcomes. Next, it reviews some of the contributions to understanding India's political economy in the last few decades. Finally, it attempts to draw some lessons from India's experience for the application of different theories of governance and development. The central lesson is that the paradox recedes when attention is paid to the subnational level, where India's states encompass considerable variation in initial societal and economic conditions and in development outcomes.

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Bureaucratic Norms and State Capacity in India

Cited by 55 publications

References 29 publications

The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

Making accountability work in basic education: reforms, challenges and the role of the government

Theories of Governance and Development: How Does India’s Experience Fit?

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