Information and State
Political agency, government responsiveness and the role of the media

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Abstract

The role of mass media in making governments responsive to the needs of citizens is a relatively neglected area in economics. We sketch a theoretical example with a role for media in enhancing government responsiveness based on asymmetric information between citizens and government. We then use data for the period 1958–1992 on the extent to which Indian state governments responded to food shortages via the public distribution of food, correlating these with proxies of media, political and economic development. We find that states that are more responsive tend to also be those with high levels of newspaper circulation, electoral turnout and literacy. In contrast, richer states do not tend to be more responsive than poorer states.

Introduction

Understanding the mechanisms by which citizens’ needs are reflected in policy is a key issue in political economy. This is particularly pertinent for populations that live in poverty and depend on the government to protect them from shocks. Indeed, the need for a responsive government is a key message of the World Bank's latest World Development Report (World Bank, 2000) on poverty reduction.

Outside of the world of perfectly benevolent governments a range of institutions – economic, social, political – affect the incentives of governments to respond to citizens’ needs. Standard reasoning suggests that responsiveness will typically depend upon the size of the group that is affected – a large group, having greater political power, is more likely to get the government's attention. However, studying the political agency problem in more detail suggests other factors that are likely to be important for government activism. First, voters have to participate in the political process in order to be capable of punishing poorly performing incumbents. Second, voters have to have the information about performance to assess the quality of their incumbents’ performance. Mass media can play a critical role here by informing voters about the actions of incumbents which they might otherwise be unaware of.

In this paper, we lay out an example of a political agency model with a role for media in enhancing government responsiveness. We then use data for the period 1958–1992 on the extent to which Indian state governments responded to food shortages via the public distribution of food and correlate these responsiveness measures with various state characteristics. We find that states with greater newspaper circulation, literacy and electoral turnout are also those that have the most responsive governments. In contrast, richer states do not tend to be more responsive than poorer states.

Section snippets

A theoretical example

We now present an example based on Besley and Burgess (2000) to illustrate when the government will respond to vulnerable citizens if they are motivated by electoral concerns. The model will underline the reasons why we might expect well developed mass media to enhance government responsiveness based on the role that it can play in disseminating information about government actions.

There are four groups of citizens. Two groups are ideological and support two ideologically distinct parties

Suggestive evidence from India

The theory suggests two things that we can confront the data with: (i) responsiveness should be greater where information flows are more developed as this enables vulnerable citizens to monitor politicians and penalize them for not responding to their needs (ii) responsiveness should be greater where political participation is greater as this increases the likelihood that citizens will punish unresponsive incumbents.

We study these issues using responses by state governments to food shortages in

Concluding comments

It is widely appreciated that the study of the mass media is a relatively neglected area in the social sciences. Viewing the government as a conscious actor, responding to incentives, gives mass media a prominent role in the solution of political agency problems. In particular, it can enhance the responsiveness of government to citizens’ needs. This is broadly consistent with data on government responsiveness to shocks in India suggesting that these ideas go beyond their theoretical

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to STICERD for financial support and Grace Wong for excellent research assistance.

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