It has been argued that since 2014, under the BJP-led central government, welfare benefits in India have become better targeted and less prone to clientelistic control by state and local governments. And moreover that this increased vote share of the BJP vis-a-vis regional parties. We test these...

Formal conceptions of state capacity have mostly focused on indirect measures of state capacity – by, for instance, using the state's fiscal or extractive capacity as a proxy for its overall capacity. Yet, this input or extractive view of state capacity falls short, especially since...