Costs of Democracy

Political Finance in India

Edited by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav

This book is the very first empirical exploration of money in Indian politics
Demonetization and the so-called 'war on black money' has captured the public discourse
While political finance is widely believed to be linked to corruption and illicit flows, there is very little literature on the subject

Costs of Democracy

Political Finance in India

Edited by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav

Description

If it impossible to conceive of democracies sans elections, why is it impossible to imagine elections without the flood of money in politics? How does every general election in India get more expensive than the last one? Stepping into the mucky terrain to find out what enables the average Indian vote to have a price, Costs of Democracy opens readers' eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political heart of the world's largest democracy.

In the first in-depth investigation drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, unique surveys, and creative and innovative data analysis, the contributions chase and unpack the institutional and regulatory context governing the flow of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the need for such large spending; how money flow, operate, and interact with different levels of government.

Costs of Democracy

Political Finance in India

Edited by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav

Costs of Democracy

Political Finance in India

Edited by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav

Author Information

Edited by Devesh Kapur, Madan Lal Sobti Professor & Director, Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, and Milan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow, South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Milan Vaishnav is a Senior Fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, distributive politics, and electoral behaviour. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press/HarperCollins India 2017) and co-editor (with Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta) of Rethinking Public Institutions in India (Oxford University Press 2017). Previously, he worked at the Center for Global Development, where he served as a postdoctoral research fellow; the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has taught at Columbia, Georgetown, and George Washington universities. He holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University.

Devesh Kapur is the Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India and Director, Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania; and Non-Resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C. He is the coauthor of The World Bank: Its First Half Century; Public Institutions in India: Performance; and Design and Against the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs. His three books on international migration examine the effects at a global level (Give us your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World); and on the country of emigration (Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India published by Princeton University Press which received the 2012 Distinguished Book Award of the International Studies Association).