Saving the Next Generation: Political Capacity and Infant Mortality Decline in India's States

Swaminathan, Siddharth; Thomas, John K.

doi:10.1080/03050620701449017

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…RPC offers an ideal assessment of institutional efficiency as theorized and discussed in the state-building literature referenced above. Finally, RPC has a robust and established track record in effectively assessing the relationship between institutional efficiency and the ability of governments to effectively wage war (Organski & Kugler, 1980), increase economic growth (Feng, Kugler & Zak, 2000), control inflation (Leblang, 1997), increase and attract investment (Feng & Chen, 1997;Coan & Kugler, 2008), manage demographic transitions including declines in fertility (Arbetman, Kugler & Organski, 1997;Swaminathan & Thomas, 2007), and increase human capital accumulation (Arbetman & Johnson, 2012). As Equation 1shows, our estimate of RPC is the actual/predicted value each ratio year: Kugler, 1997;Arbetman & Johnson, 2012).…”

Section: Connecting Political Capacity To Political Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capacity to trust? Institutional capacity, conflict, and political trust in Africa, 2000–2005

Hutchison

Johnson

2011

Journal of Peace Research

151

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Civil conflict and state failure has often been linked to breakdowns in regime legitimacy. Trust in government is a critical element of regime legitimacy and the state's ability to mediate between the demands of competing groups within society. We contend that government capability is a primary factor in shaping individuals' ascription of legitimacy to the state. Capable governments foster perceptions of legitimacy while poor institutional performance decreases the degree to which individuals trust their government. While some tests of this relationship exist in extant literature, much of the work fails to integrate both micro-and macro-level factors, is confined to regions with established state performance, or is based on single-country studies. Our approach avoids many of these deficiencies by using 32 Afrobarometer surveys collected across 16 different countries from 2000 to 2005 and employing hierarchical linear models to estimate the effects of temporal-specific, state-level variables on levels of individual trust. We find that higher institutional capacity is associated with increased levels of individual trust in government across African countries. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this effect on political trust is independent of other individual-level attitudes, socio-economic characteristics, and a state's prior internal conflicts.

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Section: Connecting Political Capacity To Political Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capacity to trust? Institutional capacity, conflict, and political trust in Africa, 2000–2005

Hutchison

Johnson

2011

Journal of Peace Research

151

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“…Our results highlight the challenges facing public behaviour change programmes in any country where education and literacy are low ( Dutta-Bergman, 2005 ) or where state capacity is low ( Slutkin et al, 2006 ; Swaminathan and Thomas, 2007 ). More broadly, we contribute to a literature in development economics that documents that programmes and policies are often not implemented nearly as completely as described in official documentation ( World Bank, 2003 ; Chaudhury et al, 2006 ; Banerjee et al, 2008 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Assessing high-profile public messaging for sanitation behaviour change: evidence from a mobile phone survey in India

Coffey¹,

Spears²,

Hathi³

2020

Waterlines

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The UN Sustainable Development Goals call for the elimination of open defecation by 2030. Assessing global progress will require learning from India’s sanitation efforts because of its ambitious program of high-profile behavior change messaging to tackle open defecation, and because open defecation is widespread in India. In 2014, the Prime Minister announced a policy called the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), which aimed to eliminate open defecation by 2019. However, the 2015–16 National Family Health Survey –4 found that about 55% of rural and 11% of urban Indian households lack a toilet or latrine. To assess the extent of public awareness of the SBM, we use a mobile phone survey to ask about people’s knowledge of the existence and purpose of the SBM. We report representative estimates of awareness of the SBM among adults in Delhi (2016), Uttar Pradesh (2016), Mumbai (2016–17), Rajasthan (2016–17), Bihar (2018), Jharkhand (2018), and Maharashtra (2018). While much of the SBM’s activities took place in its last two years, we find that, at the time of the survey, no more than one-third of adults in any state are aware that the SBM intends to promote toilet and latrine use. Awareness was particularly low in Uttar Pradesh, where one in eight people who defecates in the open worldwide lives. While the SBM was very active in constructing latrines, the lack of awareness we find suggests that the SBM was less successful in raising the awareness required for large-scale behavior change in promoting latrine use.

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“…The dearth of such public resources in newly democratized countries like Cambodia makes elections easy to rig, as thugs can easily intimidate voters by threats and acts of violence (Gallup 2002). Not only does general government effectiveness benefit from strong fiscal extractive capacity (Andrews 2008;Hout 2007;Kettl 1992), but a recent study found that in regions with low-income levels, tax collection capacity is directly related to advancing MDGs like lowering infant mortality (Swaminathan and Thomas 2007).…”

Section: Public Revenue Capacitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Good Governance, State Capacity, and the Millennium Development Goals

Joshi

2011

Perspect Global Dev Technol

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International development agencies argue that "good governance" is crucial to attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but there are many ways to define and measure good governance. The paper begins by examining the World Bank's minimal state conception of governance and then proposes an alternative approach based on strengthening state capacity. The paper tests this framework by developing a provisional Millennium Governance Index (MGI) for 126 countries. In comparative empirical analysis, the MGI has noticeably higher statistical correlations than the World Bank's governance indicators on six out of seven MDGs even after controlling for per capita income levels.

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Saving the Next Generation: Political Capacity and Infant Mortality Decline in India's States

Cited by 11 publications

References 46 publications

Capacity to trust? Institutional capacity, conflict, and political trust in Africa, 2000–2005

Capacity to trust? Institutional capacity, conflict, and political trust in Africa, 2000–2005

Assessing high-profile public messaging for sanitation behaviour change: evidence from a mobile phone survey in India

Good Governance, State Capacity, and the Millennium Development Goals

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