Journal of the European Economic Association
Party Organizations and Complementary Political Control,
2026-07-15
We study how political parties engage in political targeting of resources by coordinating politicians across multiple levels of government. We combine thousands of election outcomes from the Indian state of West Bengal with 300 million payments from a welfare scheme jointly controlled by state and local governments. We show that the state government gives disproportionate funding to co-partisan local councils, which target payments to raise votes for national candidates. Welfare payments are diverted to reward local councilors who successfully deliver votes, and to recruit opposition councilors. The ruling party recruits candidates only where it lacks a majority, systematically expanding its control.