Does Affirmative Action Worsen Bureaucratic Performance? Evidence from the Indian Administrative Service

Abstract

Although many countries recruit bureaucrats using affirmative action, the effect of affirmative action recruits on bureaucratic performance has rarely been examin ed. Some worry that affirmative action worsens bureaucratic performance by diminishing the qu ality of recruits, while others posit that it improves performance by making recruits more repr s ntative of and responsive to the population. We test for these possibilities using unusually detailed data on the recruitment, background and careers of India’s elite bureaucracy . We examine the effect of affirmative action hires on district-level implementation of MGNREGA, the wor ld’s largest anti-poverty program. The data suggest that disadvantaged group membe rs recruited via affirmative action perform no worse than others. Replication Materials: The data, code, and any additional materials required to r plicate all analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: h tp://dx.doi.org/XXX.