Citizen and State Across the Rural-Urban Divide: Claim Making, Decentralization, and the Uneven Use of Political Intermediaries

CASI Seminar
Gabi Kruks-Wisner
Assistant Professor, Politics & Global Studies, The University of Virginia
Center for the Advanced Study of India
3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

About the Speaker:
Gabi Kruks-Wisner is an Assistant Professor of Politics & Global Studies at The University of Virginia.

About the Lecture:
In developing democracies across the globe, the poor often turn to local political intermediaries to gain access to essential public goods and services. Overlooked in the literatures on distributive politics and citizenship practice, however, are sub-national institutional factors that drive variation in citizen demand for intermediaries. Drawing on a rich assemblage of survey data and qualitative fieldwork from northern India, we find that the urban poor are significantly more likely to approach political intermediaries for assistance than their rural counterparts, who are more likely to turn directly to local elected representatives. Our explanation of this puzzling divergence focuses on three contextual factors that differ sharply across the rural-urban divide in India: the depth of political and administrative decentralization; the organization and local presence of political parties; and the impressive ethnic diversity and migratory fluidity found in India’s cities, which prevent migrants from relying on informal institutions found in their villages of origin. This seminar is based on a co-authored work with Adam Auerbach (American University).

Listen to podcast (in conversation with Bilal Baloch, CASI Postdoctoral Research Fellow)

The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.