The power of political voice

Protecting the rights of disadvantaged citizens remains a challenge in both developing and developed countries. These individuals often are targets of verbal abuse, discrimination and violent crime. Using evidence from India, this paper shows that political representation of disadvantaged groups is an important means of giving them a voice in the criminal justice system.

Using state-level variation in the timing of political reforms, we find that an increase in female representation in local government induces a large and significant rise in documented crimes against women in India. Our evidence suggests that this increase is good news, as it is driven primarily by greater reporting rather than greater incidence of such crimes. We take these statistics as positive news for women's empowerment.

Female political representation at the local level also induces law enforcement officials to be more responsive to crimes against women. In contrast, we find no increase in crimes against men or gender-neutral crimes. We also examine the effectiveness of alternative forms of political representation: large-scale membership of women in local councils affects crime against them more than their presence in higher-level leadership positions. We found similar results in the case of crimes against Scheduled Castes ....