Elected Leaders, Community and Development

Although democratic decentralisation or community development by elected leaders is hypothesised to broaden development, there is little evidence on just how elected leaders make distributional decisions and far less on how communities in turn shape their leaders' decisions. This study combines structural equation modelling with ethnography in India to investigate how leaders of elected local bodies called panchayats distribute development. While quantitative findings reveal that democratic decentralisation mitigates elite capture, ethnography gives insight into the role of political brokers in brokering development for votes, widening distribution to non elite groups.