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Election campaigns are constantly regarded as a persuasive campaign to convince the nation to vote for the leader of a country. Being said such, this study investigates the discourse of twitter of two political premiers in Asia: Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak (henceforth, Najib) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (henceforth, Modi), in the aspects of discursive strategies and speech acts during election campaigns. The discourse of Najib and Modi are selected due to their active participation on Twitter throughout election campaigns. The data were collected over 3 months throughout the national elections of both the countries, which were from February to April 2013 in Malaysia and January to March 2014 in India. This qualitative study employs Wodak's discursive strategies to analyze the lexical choices utilized in the election tweets and Searle's speech act taxonomy to analyze the speech acts used. The presence of two major speech acts was highlighted during the elections: commissives and directives. These two speech acts collaborated under the hood of discursive strategies of predication and perspectivation that empowered Najib and Modi to establish a strong contact with citizens while creating a sense of integrity and oneness. This study is significant as it creates political and language awareness to citizens by denoting how political figures establish power through mutual consent with citizens using Twitter. Furthermore, this study enlightens citizens on how the 140-character tool can influence the political decision-making of a community.

This article assesses changing interest from India in Canadian versus U.S. universities since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as measured by search activity reports from Google Trends. The findings indicate a rise in Indian interest toward Canadian versus U.S. universities was underway before the election. After controlling for this trend effect, there remains widespread evidence of a substantial shift in interest toward Canadian universities with search activity rising 70%--85% for Canadian versus U.S. universities in the postelection period. This shift in interest toward Canadian universities shows no sign of dissipating. Canadian universities are likely to make further enrollment gains of Indian students versus U.S. counterparts in upcoming recruiting classes.

This article analyses the Indian elections of 2024. Prime Minister Modi was returned for a third term despite failing to win an overall majority and despite electoral losses by his BJP party. The article compares Modi's self-presentation to that of China's Zhou dynasty and the Mandate of Heaven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study aims to understand the dominant factors of political marketing strategies to influence voters in the national and state elections in India. To identify them, we have reviewed literature of different nations (both developed and developing) across the world and India. Methods: We have defined specific criteria and search terms to first identify the relevant studies that have focused on the influencing factors in the global and Indian political marketing landscape. After identifying these factors, we gleaned the key takeaways in terms of the influencing factors from all those studies and discussed the different emerging trends of shifting power from party brand to leadership brand in the national elections. We have also analyzed the impact of different factors such as party leader or candidate's personality, party policy and ideology, use of social media as a campaigning tool, and campaign messaging and platform on the national and state elections over the years Results and discussions: We found that for the national elections, partly leadership and use of social media are critical factors, while for the state elections, party policy and ideology with on-ground campaigns have a significant influence on voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 9 June 2024, Narendra Modi became India's Prime Minister for a third consecutive term, a feat previously accomplished only by Jawaharlal Nehru. However, this historic victory also began one of the most uncertain periods of his prime ministership. The fractured outcome of India's 18th general election has created a fundamentally different political landscape. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured just 240 seats, a significant drop from its 2019 tally, and was therefore short of an absolute majority. Although the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) did win a majority, Modi will now be dependent upon coalition partners, necessitating a shift towards a more collaborative governance style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how Modi's government aligned its offensive military actions (targeting Pakistan) in the wake of the Pulwama incident with the ruling party's ideological stance of right-wing populism. The net outcome of this adroit strategy saw the BJP bolster its electoral strength amidst its initially dwindling electoral position in 2019. The author draws inspiration from literature that connects right-wing populism and Hindu nationalism in relation to the shifting political dynamics in India. The core hypothesis of the study posits that Modi's aggressive military response during the Pulwama/Balakot crisis significantly influenced voter perceptions and contributed to the BJP's electoral success in 2019. The ensuing analysis probes the publicly reported instances wherein strategic use of national security rhetoric and military achievements was made to galvanise nationalist sentiments. This study highlights the broader implications of right-wing populism and Hindu nationalism on India's political and societal dynamics, raising concerns about the possibility of employment of military instrument for political advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this viewpoint article, we analyse the consolidation of Abhishek Banerjee as the future leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the dominant political party in West Bengal and one of the most influential opposition parties at the pan-Indian level. While the TMC has gone from strength to strength for over a decade under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee (who is also Abhishek's aunt), it has recently found itself in an unprecedented crisis, mired in allegations of corruption and misgovernance. Yet, every crisis presents new opportunities, and in this contribution, we show how the TMC has worked to simultaneously rejuvenate the party's orientation while taking forward a long-unfolding project of political dynasticism whereby 'the nephew' Abhishek is being positioned to take over the party leadership. Our analysis proceeds from an overview of the crises that have engulfed the TMC, to a discussion of how it has been used as a window of opportunity for raising Abhishek's standing. Towards this end, we focus on a series of recent party initiatives – particularly a mass outreach programme called Nabo Jowar (new wave) – as well as the recent 2023 panchayat elections where Abhishek played a key role in securing a landslide victory for the TMC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How Gandhi viewed elections? Scholars studying Gandhi have focussed on his strategies of ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagrah (insistence on truth), which produced conditions for mass mobilisation leading to successful decolonisation efforts in India. Though Gandhi recorded his views on franchise beginning with his petition to Natal Assembly in 1894, the researchers have not made much attempt to explore its nuances; those shaped Gandhi's evolution as a democratic crusader in the context of India as a nation. His engagements with the issues of the franchise question in Natal connected him to traditions of elections in India, and his observation of suffragette in England made him conscious of the challenges of struggle in the manner of engagement with a powerful state. This article focuses on Gandhi's engagement with various facets of elections in his early political days and argues that the 'franchise question' allowed him to understand India as a political possibility and the 'suffragette' informed his methods of mass engagement with the imperial powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) (1882–1940) had a close association with India for almost thirty years. He played a crucial role in the development of the early policy of The Round Table towards the subcontinent. He was a short-lived junior minister in charge of Indian affairs during a critical phase of the late colonial constitutional reforms. After his resignation he maintained an active relationship with India and an influential presence. During all of this time he consistently advocated the encouragement of a competitive party political system which he saw as the best guarantee of the growth of democracy on the subcontinent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central idea of promissory representation is that parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and then fulfil those promises after elections if they have the power to do so. Until now, most comparative research on the making, breaking, and keeping of parties' campaign promises, or "election pledges," has considered Western democracies. The present study examines pledge fulfilment in India, focusing on pledges made by the two main Indian parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress at the 2009 and 2014 national parliamentary elections. The evidence indicates that election pledges are prominent parts of electoral discourse and policymaking in India, as they are in Western countries. However, the form of pledge making and keeping is characterised by the distinctive features of Indian politics, notably the prevalence of valence politics on socio-economic issues and identity politics on issues relating to religion, castes and tribes, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections are a critical aspect of democratic governance, providing citizens with the power and right to express their views. A secure voting system with innovative features can improve this process. Blockchain technology is considered a disruptive innovation, and its potential for enhancing the evoting system is significant. The modern voting system is focusing more on blockchain technology to strengthen and secure the process. Blockchain is a reliable, decentralized database that can offer increased security compared to electronic voting machines (EVMs). This research paper presents a detailed study of the design, smart contracts, evaluation of action, and survey on the acceptance of blockchain-based e-voting systems. It examines the requirements for such a system and provides an understanding of the model. As the acceptance of information technology-based services and products increases, future innovation in the e-voting system may depend on blockchain technology. The survey conducted in this paper explores the differences in opinion based on gender, age, and profession among eligible voters from India regarding the acceptance of blockchain technology-based secure e-voting systems. The analysis of these differences sheds light on the potential for blockchain-based e-voting systems to enhance trust and security in the voting process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between political uncertainty and corporate investments in India. Using the data of 771 non‐financial Indian firms for the period 2007 Q1 to 2020 Q4 and for three general elections, 2009, 2014, and 2019, the study confirms a significant negative impact of political uncertainty on corporate investments and a pronounced impact of political uncertainty on corporate investment in closely contested elections. Also, we find that corporate investment tends to rise post‐election. Additionally, we find that the negative relationship between political uncertainty and corporate investment is more pronounced for politically sensitive industries and firms facing higher financial constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how exposure to favorable messages about one's preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent behavioral intentions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions' frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure. Specifically, we examine the mediating role of emotions in the relationship between motivated assessments of polls and political mobilization. To test this model, we offer empirical evidence from an online survey-experiment (N = 540) conducted during the 2019 Indian general election. We find that exposure to favorable poll results increases enthusiasm and decreases anger, while both enthusiasm and anger activate behavioral intention for political participation. While our study supports the existing findings which show that partisanship is an important predictor of mobilization for a party and candidate, we uncover the affective routes through which partisanship operates to shape poll reactions. The results underscore the importance of capturing individual variability in preexisting affiliations and their shaping of poll reactions through affect-driven motivated reactions. We discuss these results with regard to the dynamics of political mobilization during election campaigns, the role of emotions in political cognition at large, and in understanding and mitigating biases in poll perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare is one of the most important issues in India, but often overlooked and not discussed during election campaigns. Poor medical infrastructure, insufficient public health services, and unmet healthcare needs persist in the country. Though people do want the right, high quality, and cost-effective medical treatment when they fall sick, this is put on the backseat when they are healthy, thereby the demand and struggle for health care in the future remains un-articulated by both the people and the administration. India has a heavy disease burden especially in children under 5 years and women and of lifestyle diseases like stroke, ischemic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and cancer, now affecting younger adults. Increased dependence on private health care result in high out of pocket expenditure and a huge economic burden. Budgetary allocation for health consistently remains low and has not achieved 2.5% of GDP as recommended under the National Health Policy 2017 and 15th Finance Commission. Improving the public healthcare infrastructure and access, as well as addressing private healthcare costs, is the need of the hour especially during formation of a new democratic order in our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of property rights legislation on the political participation of Scheduled Tribes (STs) - an indigenous community of India. The legislation recognised forest land rights of STs who had been historically residing over forests without formal land titles. Utilising administrative data on land titles, we show that increased demand for land titles increases the political participation of STs as election candidates. This increase is on account of new political candidates that are contested by non-mainstream political parties. We provide evidence that incomplete implementation, that raises but does not meet expectations, is the mechanism. In particular, land title applications that are rejected by sub-district/district-level authorities are driving this increase. Our results suggest that land titling legislations can encourage marginalised beneficiary groups to use political participation as a means to establish their land rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study corporate investments around national elections in India. Investment rates drop by a nonsignificant 2.2% for state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) in election years. The decrease is significantly larger for private firms, which record an investment drop of 7.4%. The decrease in investment for private firms is likely attributable to political uncertainty. SOEs balance political uncertainty with the desire to woo voters who want government investments. Investments in election years are perceived positively for both private firms and for SOEs. Increased investment by SOEs and reduction in investment by private firms during election years are associated with improved investment efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors influence women's political success in ethnically divided societies? Using an original survey experiment in the Indian state of Bihar, supplemented with qualitative interviews, we explore the impact of two factors—intersecting gender and caste identity, and the interaction of campaign appeal with voter experiences of caste discrimination—on women candidates' success in state-level elections. We find, first, that women voters prefer women candidates, and that Scheduled Caste and Muslim voters also prefer candidates from their in-groups. At the same time, we identify evidence of intersectional effects, namely, that Muslim women candidates suffer from a disadvantage vis-a-vis women candidates from other backgrounds. We also show that women voters prefer candidates who offer security, especially when the candidates are women. Finally, we demonstrate that personal experience with caste discrimination increases support for women candidates. These results indicate that voters see women leaders as well-placed to ameliorate their security vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2018, the second wave of #Metooindia resumed in India, opening up conversations on sexual assault. Surprisingly, this did not lead to the inclusion of sexual assault as a key campaign issue in the Indian parliamentary elections in early 2019. This study investigates the underlying role of news media and social media in building an anti-sexual assault agenda in the 2019 Indian Lok Sabha election campaign. It builds on past literature on rational choice decision-making theory, social media activism and rape as a political issue in campaigns. This mixed method study includes the analysis of political manifestos and Facebook posts during the campaign, news articles published in the two most circulated English newspapers in India and interviews with political journalists. The restrained mainstream media coverage of sexual assault and pan-Indian social media platforms helped to limit the issue from becoming a part of the campaign during the elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the influence of political proximity and cash-holding behavior of Indian firms on firm value and operating performance. Using a robust data set of political donations and connections for listed Indian firms around three general elections in India from 2009 to 2019, we find that firms with political connections show higher performance than their nonconnected peers. We also observe that politically connected Indian firms with higher cash holdings achieve substantially better valuations over time. Our results are robust and consistent after controlling for various factors. The article coincides with the introduction of electoral bonds through an amendment in Finance Bill 2017, which formalized the corporate financing of political parties and will likely strengthen the corporate-political linkages via more substantial donations. Overall, the article introduces political proximity/connection as a new indirect factor influencing firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does inequality within and between ethno-religious groups influence the likelihood and frequency of communal riots? Using evidence from India, this article finds that low within-group and high between-group inequality dampens the likelihood and frequency of communal riots. Theoretically, the article suggests that the instrumental logic, which posits that ethnonationalist politicians use violence to stoke ethnic cleavages and mobilize support, best accounts for this finding. We argue that to be politically competitive, ethnonationalist politicians need their supporters to identify foremost with their ethnic identity. When inequality within groups is high and/or inequality between groups is low, citizens are less likely to focus on ethnicity as their primary identity. In such contexts, politicians may use communal riots to improve their electoral prospects by reinforcing the salience of ethnicity. Empirically, the article relies on a time-series cross-district analysis of inequality and Hindu–Muslim riots in India to test the instrumental argument against theoretical alternatives. To illustrate the causal logic, the article also uses the analysis of a communal riot that occurred in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Analyzing three aspects of the riot – background conditions, timing, targets of propaganda – we evaluate the different predictions of the instrumental argument. The article concludes with the suggestion that communal riots are distinct from cases of mass violence – such as civil wars, genocide, and ethnic cleansing – and could be conceptualized, along with other types of small-scale political violence, as a separate class of events with their own internal logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political violence spread around election times within countries? Although election times are periods possibly most vulnerable to the contagion of violence, we know very little about how election violence spreads spatially. We argue that government-sponsored election violence in one area will increase the levels of election violence inflicted by antisystemic actors in another area with similar political or socioeconomic characteristics. Government violence in one area increases the expectation that repression would soon start in another area that looks similar to the targeted area, prompting opposition groups in these areas to take action preemptively. We test our arguments using subnational data on India's election violence from 1991 to 2009, finding that government election violence in one state increases opposition-led election violence in another state with similar political and socioeconomic characteristics in India. Our results are robust when using a stationary causal directed acyclic graph approach and recover the bias-corrected spatial effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narendra Modi's national leadership since 2014 is a significant marker of revitalisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Indian politics. This article traces Modi's association with the idea and rhetoric of development. He presented himself as vikaspurush (development man) and as a leader who would provide strong governance for India when he campaigned in the 2014 general elections. The Gujarat Model was showcased by him as the blueprint for development for the whole of India. However, a closer analysis of the developmental paradigm demonstrates that he has changed secular meanings and connotations of state-initiated development by associating state action with the rituals of pilgrimage used in the yatra (procession) politics of the Hindu nationalist movement. The article highlights the significance of the blurring of the lines between the administrative-bureaucratic process of planning and religio-spatial symbolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral violence is perpetrated by anti-systemic actors opposed to the democratic system, as well as by those vying for power through the electoral process. Even though the motivations for violent tactics are distinct, we do not know whether intra- and anti-systemic violence differ in their effects. Focusing on state-level elections in India – a country that combines nationwide elections with persistent political violence – we demonstrate that the distinction is crucial for understanding spatial patterns of electoral violence and effects on election outcomes. Based on an original dataset of violence in legislative assembly elections between 1985 and 2008, we show that both tactics depress turnout overall but that the effect is larger for anti-systemic violence. Intra-systemic violence not only appears to be more selectively targeted, as it is more likely to occur in constituencies where the incumbent belongs to the state-level opposition, but also generates electoral benefits for the party in control of state government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do politicians allocate public resources? Despite the extensive literature on distributive politics, we have limited micro-level evidence for why and under what circumstances politicians choose various allocation strategies. India's discretionary constituency development scheme (MPLADS) provides an excellent opportunity to study the spending choices of individual politicians. Drawing on an original dataset linking voting patterns across 227,507 villages in the 2009 general elections to MPLADS allocations 2009–2014, we find that politicians generally channel more projects and resources to villages that vote for them in higher numbers. We then leverage a natural experiment created by the delimitation (redistricting) of electoral boundaries in 2008 to provide causal evidence that spending choices are driven by short-term electoral incentives. Finally, we show that allocation patterns differ by the type of party that has brought a politician to power. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on heterogeneity in politicians' distributional choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bharatiya Janata Party won the 2014 parliamentary elections in India, popularising the slogan 'Achhe din aane wale hai' ('Good days are coming'). Even as the good days remained elusive, in 2019, the party won the popular vote again, with an additional promise of culling out putative 'infiltrators' from India by announcing 'NRC aane wala hai' ('NRC is coming'). Drawing on ethnographic research carried out between 2016 and 2019 in a largely Muslim working-class neighbourhood next to one of Asia's largest garbage dumps in Mumbai, this article attempts to grasp the force of the state through its affective deferral by examining this aane wala hai form of governance – the forever-deferred, the always-arriving, the ready-to-strike – that is predicated upon weaponising deferral into a tactic of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of people from India's northeastern state of Assam have to defend themselves against suspicions that they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh. I explore how one such group of individuals, who work as waste pickers in Delhi, protect their citizenship against the combined vulnerabilities of being Assamese, Muslim, and residents of an unauthorized slum. I show that they develop a split relation with the government, defined by a costly requirement to vote in their borderland villages, and by avoidance for all matters linked to everyday life. By working hard in an occupation shunned by everyone else, they seem to uphold this citizenship of extraordinary political obligation and minimal entitlement. But when this equilibrium unravels around the debt that they contract to pay for basic services and for the trip home to cast their ballot, the price of their condition determined by suspicion, is revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions and sentiments are central to explanations of how actual living democracies work, that is, the sustaining and reconfiguring of practices, relations and common-senses that constitute them. Elections are moments of heightened emotions, when democracy breathes life into the streets and pulses through people's veins. While studies in anthropology and political science have shed light on the ways that voters are recruited by and experience the passionate and sensuous elements of elections, and democracies more broadly, the emotions of candidates and the politicians they become have largely escaped scrutiny. The value of an emotionally attuned reading of elections is demonstrated through the narratives of women candidates in Dehradun's municipal elections in North India. The ways candidates feel, and in the process make democracy, illuminate unrecognised factors in the shaping of the political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States worldwide use facial recognition technology (FRT) to assist in policing citizens, monitoring public goods, and even running elections. This article asks how FRT in polling stations affects voter turnout. Existing research on technology in elections offers ambiguous predictions for the direction and magnitude of the effect. I leverage a state-run randomized pilot of FRT in local elections in a municipality in Telangana, India, to show that polling stations with FRT have lower turnout compared to those without. I discuss how three possible mechanisms might explain this effect: logistical issues, shifts in fraudulent activity, and apprehension about government surveillance particularly among marginalized citizens. Given the small sample of this pilot, the findings should be viewed as suggestive but indicative of the need for future research on the consequences that new technologies in governance can have on citizens in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A democracy is built on free and fair elections. India is one of the world's most populous democratic countries. In 2018, the Indian government launched a new electoral bonds scheme to fund elections. Electoral bonds influence election funding and make it easier for corporate entities to conceal political donations by concealing the bond's buyer and beneficiary details. The new electoral bonds scheme lures companies and facilitates money laundering. The present article critically evaluates the electoral bonds scheme by analyzing the various acts and statutes. However, the Indian judiciary evaded its role as guardian of the constitution and final interpreter of the constitution by not deciding the cases pending in court. The scheme provides an unfair advantage to the ruling party. Anonymity and secrecy harm accountability in a democracy. The new election funding scheme undermines transparency and fair elections. This new election funding scheme has exacerbated the situation in Indian democracy. This new mechanism of election funding keeps voters in the dark about whether the governing party favors corporate donations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of WhatsApp as a mode of dissemination of political posters. It found that platform affordances that control the crafting and dissemination of political messages open up the possibility of vague political messaging by conforming to the social media's visual culture and limit the spread of these messages, restricting the ability to organically gather support for a political cause. Despite the growing appeal of social media in political campaigns, social media messages when used by individuals and small, independent social media groups, who are not a part of a larger, organized political party or movement, have little influence on electoral decisions of voters about a political cause that faces weak public support. This was discussed in the context of electoral results of the Leftist political party in India in 2019 national elections. The paper then contributes to our understanding of the extent of the influence of social media platforms on political media messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has the consolidation of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the dominant party at the national level since the 2014 Lok Sabha election affected internal security outcomes in India? This question assumes particular significance because of the primacy accorded to the use of force in the BJP's counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy. Using sub-national data on insurgency-related fatalities from 2005–2021, I examine whether states where the BJP received the largest share of votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha election subsequently experienced any significant changes in the pattern of fatalities. Implementing a difference-in-difference econometric specification, I show that the BJP states experienced a relatively sharper decline in security force fatalities from pre-2014 compared to non-BJP states. However, there was no such effect on civilian fatalities or the total number of insurgency-related incidents. Taken together, these findings show that the greater thrust towards militarism in COIN strategy under the BJP, has, paradoxically, increased the security of military/police personnel involved in COIN operations, without commensurate changes in the security of those whom they are mandated to defend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic voting is thought to underlie Duverger's Law and lead to two-party outcomes in single-member district plurality (SMDP) systems. We examine the extent of strategic voting in the world's most populous democracy, India, where frequent exceptions to Duverger's Law have long puzzled political scientists. Using an original voter survey from the 2017 Uttar Pradesh state election, we find extremely low rates of strategic voting. Why? We show that the vast majority of respondents believe that their preferred party is likely to win in their constituency. For most voters, their partisan preferences overwhelmingly predict their beliefs about which party will win. Their election forecasts correspond to objective electoral outcomes only with respect to parties that they like less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uncovers evidence of political cycles in developmental outcomes in the Indian context. Comparing children born to the same mother, it shows that children born 0–11 months before scheduled state legislative assembly elections have a significantly lower risk of neonatal mortality. The effect of being born just before elections is higher in politically more competitive regions. The paper provides some evidence of the channels behind this result. The usage of prenatal care increases before elections and mothers of children born before elections are more likely to have antenatal checkups and tetanus injections during pregnancy. Components of antenatal checkups, like the probability of having a blood test or an abdominal examination during pregnancy, also increase before elections. The improvement in child health outcomes before elections seems to be driven by a transfer of resources from non-election to election years rather than an overall improvement in child health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are elections immediately preceded by periods of increased violent crimes? In this paper, we test the link between criminal activity and electoral cycles. We use annual data from 1981 to 2007 on crimes and data from the parliamentary elections in India for the same period. Using a difference‐in‐difference design, we find that election years have significantly higher incidence of violent crimes even after accounting for poverty and inequality. This effect is statistically significant and consistent across specifications. The effect is magnified in districts that are more competitive. Similar regressions using economic crimes and elections show either a decline or no effect. Our results are strongly indicative of a close link between violent crimes and elections, and are critical for the growing debate on the criminalization of politics in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the consequences of election violence for citizens’ political attitudes? We argue that in polarized contexts, citizens’ interpretation of electoral violence depends on their partisan affiliations. When presented with information alleging co-partisans’ involvement in violence, people with strong partisan identities become more likely to assert that elections were free and fair. We test this expectation with a vignette experiment in West Bengal after India’s 2019 elections, presenting respondents with information about violence while varying the partisan identity of the perpetrator. Consistent with expectations, supporters of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) increased their evaluations of election quality when hearing about co-partisan violence. We find no evidence of disconfirmation bias for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters; their recent shift to the party plausibly explains this finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do perceptions of insecurity from politically motivated violence affect the decision of poor voters to re-elect incumbents in Indian elections? This article examines this question in the empirical context of the Maoist-affected Junglemahal region in the state of West Bengal in eastern India. Exploiting original survey data collected in 38 Maoist-affected villages in Junglemahal prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, I show that respondents (a) were able to discriminate between politically motivated violence and other governance-related issues, (b) were more inclined to vote for the incumbent the greater the importance attached to the provision of public goods, but (c) were less inclined to vote for the incumbent the greater the importance attached to politically motivated violence. In auxiliary tests, I find that the effect of the perceived threat from politically motivated violence was mediated by feelings of fear, anger, and worry about the general direction in which the state was going. I also present evidence showing a positive relationship between the level of campaign contact by the opposition party and the level of negative emotions experienced by voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral campaigning in India is now effectively multi-modal and inhabits both the virtual and the real sphere. However, tools and techniques of campaigning vary across parties. The two parties that this paper focuses on, the BJP and the AAP, are known for running highly organized campaigns marked by their intensity and voter reach. The paper looks at the specific case of the Delhi assembly elections of 2015 and 2020 to compare strategies and the election campaign of the two parties. The paper argues that while the campaign of both parties was methodical and micro-managed, the selection of electoral issues and customization of the campaign to the addressed audience varied. The parties are comparable in terms of being leader centric, tending towards the personalization of politics, and both conducted professionalized campaigns, yet the political marketing of the element of affect differed. To demonstrate this, the paper firstly draws on literature in the field of political communication to illustrate the role of emotions, or the aspect of affect, in an electoral campaign. Secondly, through a perusal of media reportage and analysis, the paper traces the process by which personalization was manifested and how the narrative of affect came to be framed in the election campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]