Patient Persuasion: Religious Welfare and Poor Voters in India

About the Lecture:
How do religious parties with historically elite support bases win the mass support required to succeed in democratic politics? This study examines why the world’s largest such party, the upper-caste, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has experienced variable success in wooing poor voters across India. Dr. Thachil argues that conventional electoral strategies based on policies, patronage, or ideological polarization are unable to explain the BJP’s pattern of success with poor Hindus. Instead, he demonstrates the party's reliance on social services provided by its organizational affiliates within the Hindu nationalist movement. Through this analysis, he develops broader arguments about why religious parties might utilize private services as an electoral strategy, how such services win over poor voters, and when this strategy is likely to succeed or fail.

About Penn Comparative Politics Workshop:
The Penn Comparative Politics Workshop has been running since 1999, when it was started by Jose Chiebub and Rudy Sil. The intent of the workshop is to bring energetic scholars engaged in substantively interesting and methodologically varied projects in the field of comparative politics to a Penn audience. While the workshop has occasionally brought speakers to present previously published work, for the most part, research in progress is targeted. Thus, the workshop serves the function of providing the Political Science community at Penn with a glimpse of scholarly endeavors at different stages of the research process, while at the same time offering visitors feedback in the form of often vigorous exchanges on the presented work.

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