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The article discusses how legitimated Political-Economic Diagnosis through a mixture of limited welfare measures for the poor and a majoritarian nationalism that sustains itself by stifling the democratic process. Topics include India's 'governance effectiveness' in terms of three factors: public resources, state capacity and the centralized federal structure, with the concomitant weakness of regional and local government.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.03.002 Byline: Pranab Bardhan (a), Maitreesh Ghatak (b), Alexander Karaivanov (c) Keywords: Collective action; Inequality; Public goods Abstract: We study the effect of inequality in the distribution of endowments of private inputs (e.g., land, wealth) that are complementary in production with collective inputs (e.g., contribution to public goods such as irrigation and extraction from common-property resources) on efficiency in a class of collective action problems. We focus on characterizing the joint surplus maximizing level of inequality, making due distinction between contributors and non-contributors, in a framework that allows us to consider a wide variety of collective action problems ranging from pure public goods to impure public goods to commons. We show that while efficiency increases with greater equality within the groups of contributors and non-contributors, so long the externalities (positive or negative) are significant, there is an optimal degree of inequality between these groups. Author Affiliation: (a) University of California, Berkeley, United States (b) London School of Economics, United Kingdom (c) Simon Fraser University, Canada Article History: Received 18 August 2006; Revised 15 February 2007; Accepted 7 March 2007 Article Note: (footnote) [star] An earlier version of this paper has been circulated under the title 'Inequality, Market Imperfections, and the Voluntary Provision of Collective Goods'. We thank Jean-Marie Baland, Abhijit Banerjee, Timothy Besley, Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Richard Cornes, Avinash Dixit, Eliana La Ferrara, Hannes Mueller, Todd Sandler, Paul Seabright, an anonymous referee and several seminar audiences for helpful comments. The responsibility for all errors and shortcomings remains ours.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.10.010 Byline: Pranab Bardhan Keywords: absolute poverty; self-employed; wage employed; trade liberalization; globalization Abstract: In this paper, we provide an analytical account of the mechanisms through which globalization, in the sense of increased foreign trade and long-term capital flows, affects the lives of the rural poor in developing countries (in their capacity as workers, consumers, recipients of public services, or users of common property resources). Globalization can not only cause many hardships for the rural poor, but it can also open up some opportunities which some countries can utilize and others do not, largely depending on their domestic political and economic institutions, and the net outcome is often quite complex and almost always context dependent, belying the glib pronouncements for or against globalization made in the opposing camps. Author Affiliation: University of California at Berkeley, USA Article History: Accepted 20 October 2005

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2006.01.004 Byline: Pranab Bardhan (a), Dilip Mookherjee (b) Keywords: Poverty; Targeting; Accountability; Decentralization of service delivery; Corruption; West Bengal Abstract: A commonly alleged pitfall of decentralization is that poverty, socio-economic inequality and lack of political competition allow local elites to capture local governments. This hypothesis is empirically examined using a longitudinal sample of 89 West Bengal villages concerning targeting of credit, agricultural input kits, employment programs and fiscal grants spanning the period 1978-98. Higher poverty, land inequality and low caste composition of the poor was associated with negligible adverse effects on targeting of private goods to the poor within villages, but with lower employment generation out of allotted funds, and significantly lower allocation of resources to the village as a whole. Political competition or literacy levels among the poor were not systematically related to targeting. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, United States (b) Department of Economics, Boston University, United States Article History: Accepted 24 January 2006

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.03.011 Byline: Pranab Bardhan Keywords: corruption; methodology; equilibria; costs Abstract: This paper will first distinguish between the non-economist's approach to corruption largely on the basis of public morals and norms and the economist's approach in terms of incentives and organization. I then discuss why otherwise similar countries may end up with different equilibrium levels of corruption, why such equilibria tend to persist, and why corruption in some countries seems to be more damaging to the economy than in others. I then try to derive some policy lessons. Author Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Article History: Accepted 9 March 2005

The delivery of antipoverty programs in developing countries is decentralized by delegating authority to local governments rather than centrally appointed bureaucrats. While decentralizing enhances cost-effectiveness of the delivery system, the local governmentsE proneness to pressure from local elites to divert the supplies poses a major problem to the decentralized delivery mode.