I am grateful to Dawn Brancati for her thoughtful and insightful review of my book. Her critiques have given me a renewed opportunity to reflect on its argument and findings, and about what they mean for our understanding of local democracy.
Brancati’s criticism of the way that local democracy is conceptualized and measured in the book is well taken. She is certainly correct that democracy requires more than just popular elections, and while the findings of Democratization from Above could shed light on when and how a basic requirement of democracy comes to be established at the grassroots level, there is much more to be learned about the factors that give rise to variation in the openness and competitiveness of local elections once they are established.
At the same time, I would argue that the operationalization of local democracy that I use is less problematic for the book’s theory and findings than Brancati contends. A key reason is that elections at the grassroots level are often difficult for national- or state-level elites to closely manipulate in the aggregate because of the very large number of highly localized races they typically entail. Consequently, as I argue in the book, aggregate levels of competition in village elections have been reasonably robust, not only in India but also in highly authoritarian contexts like China’s, where local elections have involved a reasonable level of competition between candidates despite the lack of multiparty competition. Thus, I contend that national and state government elites who choose to establish local elections do so precisely because such elections will lead to a certain level of competition that neither they, nor—crucially—their rivals, can prevent.
Specifically, I argue in the book that these national or state government elites introduce local elections because the competition that results will help loosen the grip that these powerful bosses have over the base of local intermediaries within the party. Thus, although Brancati’s critique suggests that local elections would have to be undemocratic in order for local intermediaries to fulfill the functions I ascribe to them, my theory suggests the opposite. It is, in fact, only local elections that are sufficiently democratic that would allow government elites who face intraparty competition to undermine the control that their rivals have over local intermediaries in their party’s organizational networks, while at the same time ensuring that these local intermediaries are motivated to serve their constituents. Thus, my argument that local democratization reforms can offer government elites a means of establishing an alternative local support base outside existing party organizational networks appears sound, even in the face of Brancati’s critique.
Still, this debate (as well as other debates that Brancati’s critique raises) highlights some important yet unanswered questions about local elections. When and how do local elections prove risky for the prospects of national elites? Do local elections engender greater local autonomy? Brancati and I offer somewhat competing perspectives on these questions. However, resolving these debates requires further research on the relationship among local elections, democratization, and decentralization. I hope that future scholarship will take on these questions that could help improve our collective understanding of these important phenomena.
