Money in Elections

This chapter investigates the role of personal wealth and self-financing candidates in Indian elections, namely, why financial capacity of the candidate is an important feature of Indian electoral politics and how it structures the incentives of political parties. Using detailed data on candidates’ assets, this chapter demonstrates that a candidate’s personal wealth, measured in terms of moveable assets, has a significant positive impact on her electoral fortunes. It further shows that wealthy candidates directly filter into competitive parties. But even among these wealthy candidates from competitive parties, the wealthiest candidate has a greater probability of winning the constituency. The empirical results strongly support the view that there are structural and institutional reasons for the outward display of wealth in Indian electoral campaigns.