When do local politicians have an incentive to exert the costly effort required to mobilize electoral support for higher-level politicians? While the previous chapters show that the actions of state governments in implementing local democracy are consistent with the book's argument, this chapter investigates whether local politicians also behave in a manner consistent with the argument. While previous research has shown that local politicians exert a significant effect on electoral outcomes at higher levels of government (e.g. Ames 1994; Samuels 2000), we know less about when and why they choose to exercise this influence. This chapter shows how the theoretical framework developed in previous chapters can shed light on this question. This framework suggests that while local electoral competition incentivizes local politicians to serve the interests of voters, party members at higher levels also need to incentivize local elected politicians to mobilize electoral support on behalf of their party at higher levels. Thus, a key implication of the book's argument is that the degree to which elected local incumbents have an incentive to mobilize electoral support for party members at the state (national) level depends on the extent to which their party members at the state (national) level have access to power and patronage resources that could be targeted to elected local politicians. A secondary implication of the argument is that a local politician's performance in local elections provides a signal to party members at higher levels of his or her effectiveness in serving as an intermediary. This in turn suggests that a local incumbent who has achieved greater success in local elections will have a greater ability to influence the vote choice of her constituents in favor of her party's candidates in state or national elections. In this chapter, I test these implications by examining the conditions that shape the incentives of grassroots politicians to mobilize votes on behalf of their party's candidates at the state level in India.

Specifically, this chapter utilizes statistical analyses of electoral data from the village and state constituency levels in Kerala to test the key hypotheses. The key advantage of focusing on Kerala is that it is one of two major states in India where village elections are officially held along party lines.