We study how a fragmented political landscape affects fiscal policy and economic growth with a sample of 15 Indian States over the period 1980-2000. We measure state-level political fragmentation with an inverse Herfindahl index for party vote shares in the state legislature. Our results show...

The recent increase in the number of criminally accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furor in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent views, the implications of their elections to state legislative assemblies on constituency-level...