CeDEx Seminar - Michael Callen (LSE)

Michael will present online at the later time of 3pm and on Thursday (to avoid clashing with our Senior Academic Seminar).

Title: Does Revolution Work? Evidence from the Birth of Nepal's Federal Democracy

The paper is co-authored with Rohini Pande (Yale), Bhishma Bhusal (Govt. of Nepal),  Saad Gulzar (Stanford), Soledad Artiz Prillaman (Stanford), and Deepak Singhania (EPoD India at IFMR).

Abstract: The political consequences of revolution are among the most important, but least understood, of all war impacts. In 2015, after a decade-long conflict and nine years of negotiation, Nepal promulgated a constitution that replaced its 240-year-old monarchy by a federal republic. The subsequent 2017 local elections ushered more than 30,000 first-time politicians into office. Using a census of 3.68 million Nepalis covering eleven districts, party nomination lists and party candidate selection committee surveys, electoral data and information on conflict incidence, we document patterns of political selection and implications for policy. We have four main findings: First, castes that were historically excluded from political representation gained representation generally. Second, the Maoist party -- the group that led the armed conflict -- played a critical role in enabling political inclusion, with the greatest relative nomination of historically under-represented castes and a high premium placed on political inclusion in selection decisions. In addition, party elites in charge of candidate selection in the Maoist party are disproportionately from historically excluded groups and exhibit less implicit bias against low caste groups.  Third, political representation affects policy inclusion: we exploit close local elections to show that greater political representation for excluded castes closed the gap between excluded and included castes in individual access to earthquake reconstruction transfers.