Gender and the State Politics of Policy Implementation in Education: The Interaction of Bureaucratic and Legislative Representation in India

Abstract

Abstract Representation frequently links state politics to policy. Current research, however, overlooks the interplay between bureaucratic and legislative representation and how local representation may be influenced by state policy environments. There is also a need to test current theories of state politics and policy, driven by the study of US federalism, in different national contexts to indicate how general such theories might be and to provide new insights into the study of US politics and policy. This article studies how gender representation and local policy implementation interacts with state environment factors to affect representation outcomes in K–12 education across 28 states in India. The research points to the generalizability of current theories of representation and state politics across national federal contexts, the conditional nature of the influence of bureaucratic representation on state policy implementation, and the need to better understand the interdependence of representation across political institutions.