TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Cassan, Guilhem
AU  - Iyer, Lakshmi
AU  - Mirza, Rinchan Ali
        TI  - Enfranchisement, Political Participation and Political Competition: Evidence from Colonial India
        PY  - 2020/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 13476
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13476
        AB  - We examine how political participation and political competition are shaped by two class-based extensions of the franchise in 20th-century India. Creating a new dataset of district level political outcomes between 1921 and 1957, we find that the partial franchise extension of 1935 resulted in significantly lower incumbency advantage, while the institution of universal adult suffrage in 1950 resulted in increased candidacy. Both these franchise extensions resulted in decreased voter turnout rates, suggesting that newly enfranchised voters are less engaged in the political process.
        KW  - democratization
KW  - colonial rule
KW  - India
KW  - franchise extension
KW  - political participation
KW  - political competition
        ER  -