Does Affirmative Action in Politics Hinder Performance? Evidence from India

We examine how performance of elected representatives, as measured by delivery of public goods, is ai¬€ected by ai¬ƒrmative action in elections, i.e., imposing quota in elections for one population group. We show both theoretically and empirically, using randomized electoral quotas for a caste group (OBCs) in India, that when group identities are salient and group sizes are asymmetric, ai¬ƒrmative action may in fact increase electoral competition and consequently, improve leader’s performance. The result challenges the notion that equity promotion must necessarily come at the cost of “ei¬ƒciency.†It further justii¬ es the electoral quota policy in India of targeting the jurisdictions where the group is numerous