The agenda of the course, loosely stated, is to discuss details of decision-making and consequences thereof in a society with established democratic principles. We will primarily be concerned with elections, its various institutional details and their implications on policy making. We will understandably not be able to cover a lot of otherwise important topics in political economy. We will begin with voting rules, models of electoral competition, election design: term length, term limit, primary elections, electoral systems etc. We will then move to some discussion on models of group based collective action and their implication on public good provision and inequality. We will focus on issues of clientelism, dynastic politics, affirmative action, violence and politics. We will end with some discussion on the importance of certain political and legal institutions and state capacity for the long-run economic health of a society.
Prerequisite: ECO 5401 (Econometrics I)
sabyasachi.das@ashoka.edu.in