To what extent does a traditionally disadvantaged group benefit from gaining political representation? By focusing on the case of Dalits (the former "untouchables") in India, this project provides an overview of the relative benefits and downsides of "descriptive representation" and a specific focus on the impact of the inclusion of Dalits in political institutions on attitudes toward Dalits. In contrast with prevalent theories of "realistic conflict" and group competition, the project argues that attitudes towards Dalits should improve in the long run with their political representation. To provide empirical evidence supporting this claim, the study uses survey-experiments and other attitudinal variables measuring attitudes towards Dalits in a survey of Southern Indian villages. Empirically, the project has two objectives: measure the extent to which Dalit representation has affected attitudes towards Dalits and investigate the causal mechanisms that lie behind any changes. Since villages in which political offices are specifically set aside for Dalits are randomly chosen according to the "reservation" system in place since 1993, survey answers allow clearer causal estimates of the impact of Dalit political inclusion on attitudes.
The project makes several contributions. Scholars have devoted surprisingly little attention to the attitudinal repercussions of a change in the ethnicity of political leaders. This question appears crucial in regards to the prevalent view in political science, according to which ethnic groups fight for the control of economic and political resources. Following this hypothesis, a deterioration of interethnic relations would likely offset the material gains a group derives from political representation. To address this question, the proposal uses experimental designs employed by political psychologists interested in racial attitudes in the United States. The project thus strives to circumvent social desirability effects among respondents and proposes a rare comparative test of some of the questions the American literature on group attitudes has been debating for the last three decades.
This project has broader impacts from informing at least two major, public policy-related debates. The first concerns the relative benefits of increasing the participation of citizens from disadvantaged groups in policy-making processes. While this consensual prescription is widely accepted, very little evidence currently exists concerning the overall benefits this would bring to the targeted community. This project also informs the debate over the value and the benefits of "positive discriminations." Arguments over the negative impact on intergroup relations of positive discriminations, such as "political reservations," have been developing fast in India, in France and in the United States. This will also yield relevant findings on this question. While the project focuses on the impact of descriptive representation on these attitudes, other scholars interested in racial/ethnic attitudes may subsequently use this original data to test a variety of hypotheses related to the environmental determinants of intergroup attitudes.
