Criminality and Incumbency of Candidates to the National Legislature in India

Abstract

Utilizing new data on criminal charges against candidates to India's Fourteenth and Fifteenth Lok Sabha elections, we study the conditions that resulted in approximately a quarter of those elected to each legislature facing or having previously faced criminal charges. We show that Indian political parties are more likely to select criminals to run as candidates in electoral districts with lower levels of literacy and when parties face greater electoral uncertainty. The first finding resonates with a large literature that documents that poorly informed voters are more vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous politicians. The latter finding runs contrary to standard democratic theory, which claims that more electoral competition improves democratic accountability. We provide a formal model to gain insight into this surprising result. Subsidiary results show that the well-known incumbency disadvantage characterizing India legislative elections stems from the extraordinary performance of criminal candidates.