Public service investments and their impact on electoral outcomes

Abstract

Representation of people is the fundamental duty that every public representative is bound upon as the representative is considered to be held accountable through regular elections in a representative democracy. Such political representation must have citizens perspectives present in the policy process, in this case, to sanction and implement projects which enables their access to basic amenities and aids to the local development of the area. Advancing study on this domain would provide insights to the ways in which voters (constituents) can influence their public representatives to decide upon certain policy choice over the other. The outcome of this study could help one understand the strength of the relationship between a public representative’s policy choices (of course including its delivery) and the people’s support to the representative. It is noteworthy that a citizen’s vote is an impetus that could transform him/her from a common resident to the protagonist of the city (or neighborhood) on its wellbeing and its development. The research has three parts – the first part to understand what the concept of ideal representation means to the voters of Bengaluru through quantitative cum qualitative surveys, the second part to look whether there is presence of an aspect of retrospective voting among the voters and to see whether it has helped incumbent candidate(s) win their re-election bids using quantitative perception surveys and econometric analysis based on 2014 & 2019 general election results, and the third part to look at the aspect of public participation and utilization of public service delivery using a case study model through conducting in-depth interviews. Certain gaps and areas where there is a scope of improvement have been identified for which policy recommendations are given in the final part of this dissertation.

Key words: Representation, Voter, Public service delivery, Infrastructural facility, Retrospective voting, Public participation.