Enfranchisement, political participation and political competition: evidence from colonial and independent India

We examine how political participation and political competition are shaped by two class-based extensions of the franchise in 20th-century India. Creating a new dataset of district level political outcomes between 1921 and 1957, we find that both the partial franchise extension of 1935 and the universal suffrage reform of 1950 led to limited increases in citizen participation as voters or candidates, and neither reform had a significant effect on measures of political competition. Despite the limited effects on political outcomes, districts with greater enfranchisement increases experienced higher education provision by provincial governments.