Does representation affect trust in political institutions?: Evidence from redistricting in India.

Trust in political institutions is considered to be distinctly crucial for maintaining the stability and legitimacy of such institutions. In this paper, I document an important channel through which characteristics of political institutions could affect political trust by studying the impact of a change in representation on political trust. I use the delimitation exercise of 2008 as a source of change in representation of districts within state legislatures in India and respondents' self-reported confidence in politicians and state government from two rounds of the IHDS (India Human Development Survey) as measures of political trust. Implementing a difference-in-differences strategy with a household panel, the estimates show that households living in districts that gained representatives in the state legislative assembly show an improvement in reported confidence in both politicians and the state government. There is no evidence of a symmetric negative effect for households living in districts that lose seats. Further, this improvement in confidence is accompanied by an improvement in economic performance as proxied by night time luminosity and is associated with an increase in voter turnout as well as a decrease in age and corruption of electoral candidates in gaining districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]