As cities throughout the developing world grow, they often expand more quickly than the infrastructure and service delivery networks that provide residents with basic necessities such as water and public safety. Why do some cities deliver more effective infrastructure and services in the face of rapid growth than others? Why do some households and communities secure better services than others? Answering these questions requires studying the large, politicized bureaucracies charged with providing urban services, especially the relationships between frontline workers, agency managers, and citizens in informal settlements. Researchers investigating public service delivery in cities of the Global South, however, have faced acute data scarcity when addressing these themes. The recent emergence of crowd-sourced data offers researchers new means of addressing such questions. In this paper, we draw on our own research on the politics of urban water delivery in India to highlight new types of analysis that are possible using crowd-sourced data and propose solutions to common pitfalls associated with analyzing it. These insights should be of use for researchers working on a broad range of topics in comparative politics where crowd-sourced data could provide leverage, such as protest politics, conflict processes, public opinion, and law and order.

Can the decline of a hegemonic party through peaceful democratic transition create conditions for greater political contestation? This paper shows that lack of political competition has long term consequences for democratic practice. Using granular electoral data from a state in India, the world’s largest democracy, we find that local governments that experience electoral dominance under a one-party rule are less likely to be competitive when a new party comes to power. Further, we show that the means of coercion used to maintain electoral dominance: limiting contestation by political opponents through the use of violence and intimidation persist even after the incumbent party loses power. These results add to our understanding of democracy as a hybrid regime by examining how political parties can use decentralization of power to local governments to create the conditions for one-party dominance with semi-authoritarian characteristics.

How do political parties influence the implementation of welfare policies in developing democracies? This paper explores the importance of party linkages between local and higher-level governments in determining the allocation of financial resources for welfare programs. We show that vertical party linkages between local and higher levels of government are crucial in explaining the allocation of welfare funds at the local level: co-partisan local governments are rewarded with greater financial resources while opposition strongholds see a strong reduction in funds. We suggest that the party adopts a reward and punishment strategy to consolidate its political position. The paper adds to our understanding of how non-programmatic implementation of policies is shaped by party linkages across different levels of government.