Articles:
10. Rizzo, Tesalia and Aditya Dasgupta. 2025. "Does the Built Environment Shape Voter Participation? Learning from Polling Place Imagery in Mexico". Conditionally accepted, American Political Science Review.
Abstract: Does the built environment shape political behavior, particularly voter participation in the democratic process? We use computer vision to learn high-dimensional relationships between the built environment and voter turnout in Mexico, where citizens cast ballots in variable physical environments.
Access: [preprint]
TLDR: We use computer vision applied to street view and overhead imagery of polling places to learn how architecture and built environment shape the costs of voting in Mexico.
9. Agnihotri, Anustubh, Aditya Dasgupta and Devesh Kapur. 2025. "Bureaucrat Assignments as Instruments of Political Control: Evidence from Land Administration Officials in India". Conditionally accepted, American Journal of Political Science.
Abstract: This paper investigates how the assignment of bureaucrats to geographical posts – a personnel system found in many countries – may be used by politicians to control, and in some cases corrupt, bureaucratic behavior. The argument is developed with a matching model and evaluated with a nationwide survey of land administration officials in India.
Access: [preprint]
Media: [The Print]
TLDR: A good assignment is worth a large salary premium to officials, we show with a novel design. Politicians use control of assignments to exert pressure on officials corrupt the regulation of land, a source of rents.
8. Dasgupta, Aditya and Elena Ruiz Ramirez. 2024. "Explaining Rural Conservatism: Political Consequences of Technological Change in the Great Plains". American Political Science Review. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055424000200
Abstract: Rural areas are conservative electoral strongholds in the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. But this was not always the case. What explains the historical rise of rural conservatism? This paper examines how technological change transformed not only agriculture but rural political preferences during the twentieth century.
Access: [open access][journal website][replication data]
Media/Blogs: [Broadstreet][Wikipedia][Reddit][APSA Public Scholarship][Boston Globe][LSE USAPP]
Awards: 2021 Franklin Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Prize for Best Paper presented at the APSA annual meeting
TLDR: After the introduction of center-pivot irrigation, counties overlying the Ogallala aquifer became much more conservative in their voting patterns as 'big ag' (agribusiness) thrived and drove political preferences to the right.
7. Dasgupta, Aditya and Daniel Ziblatt. 2022. Capital Meets Democracy: The Impact of Franchise Extension on Sovereign Bond Markets. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12585
Abstract: By empowering poor voters, did the emergence of democracy pose a risk to concentrated wealth held in the form of financial capital? We study the reaction of the sovereign bond market to franchise reforms in Europe and the Americas, 1800-1920.
Access: [preprint][[journal website][replication data]
Media/Blogs: [Broadstreet][Twitter][WeChat]
Awards: Honorable Mention, Best Article Published in AJPS, 2022.
TLDR: After countries extended the right to vote to poor voters, bond yields went up (prices went down), as investors perceived these political changes to pose an expropriation risk to capital.
6. Dasgupta, Aditya and Devesh Kapur. 2020. The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India, American Political Science Review. Vol 114 (4): 1316-1334.
Abstract: Drawing on a survey of rural development officials, including time-usage diaries which measure their behavior, this paper studies the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.
Access: [preprint][journal website][replication data]
Media/Blogs: [Hindustan Times][India Today][Twitter]
TLDR: Bureaucrats can't get their work done because they are under-resourced and can't allocate enough time to core functions. Politicians don't fix things because it is not easy to claim electoral credit for state capacity.
5. Dasgupta, Aditya. 2018. Technological Change and Political Turnover: The Democratizing Effects of the Green Revolution in India. American Political Science Review. Vol 112 (4) pp. 918-938.
Abstract: Can technological change, as a form of “creative destruction”, contribute to political turnover? This paper investigates a large-scale historical natural experiment in rural India: the impact of the green revolution.
Access: [preprint][journal website][appendix][replication data]
Media/Blogs: [LiveMint][The Print] [Ideas for India][Broadstreet]
Awards: 2019 Best Article Award, APSA Comparative Democratization Section; 2019 Evan Ringquist Best Article Award, APSA Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics Section
TLDR: India used to be a dominant party system. This system collapsed when as a result of new crop technologies agriculture commercialized and farmers started to demand political representation.
4. Dasgupta, Aditya, Kishore Gawande, and Devesh Kapur. 2017. (When) Do Anti-poverty Programs Reduce Violence? India’s Rural Employment Guarantee and Maoist Conflict. International Organization. Vol. 71 (3): pp.605-32.
Abstract: Drawing on a policy experiment, we demonstrate that anti-poverty programs can mitigate civil conflict, but also highlight the role of state capacity in shaping these effects.
Access: [preprint][journal website][appendix][replication data]
Media/Blogs: [InsTED]
TLDR: A rural public works program reduced insurgency-related violence in India, but this effect was only found in districts with adequate state capacity to implement the program properly.
3. Dasgupta, Aditya and Daniel Ziblatt. 2015. How did Britain Democratize? Views from the Sovereign Bond Market. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 75 (1): pp.1-29.
Abstract: To assess competing theories of democratization, we analyze British sovereign bond market responses to the Great Reform Acts.
Access: [preprint][journal website][replication data]
TLDR: Britain is thought to be a case of peaceful/gradual democratization, but we show using financial market data that key reforms were in fact associated with a great deal of volatility and perceived political risk.
Other writing:
2. Dasgupta, Aditya. 2024. "Natural Experiments and Historical Social Science" in Causal Inference and American Political Development, ed. Jeffrey Jenkins, Springer Press.
Abstract:I consider the promise and pitfalls of using natural experiments, in light of lessons learned from historical political economy (HPE), where the ‘credibility revolution’ has made significant inroads
Access:[preprint][publisher website]
TLDR: We can learn a lot from natural experiments, as long as they are studied properly and not faked in the interest of publishing stuff.
1. Dasgupta, Aditya. 2020. "Democracy without Capacity?" in Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 42 (1): pp. 1-3.
Abstract: This essay argues, drawing on the case of India, that democracy without adequate state capacity results in several pathologies, including democratic dysfunction and a temptation toward authoritarian populism.
Access:[preprint][publisher website]
TLDR: Democracies need functional bureaucracies to thrive and survive. This was part of a Fred Riggs public administration round table on bureaucracy and democracy.