The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India

Abstract

Government programs often fail because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. What explains this chronic weakness of local state capacity? Prominent explanations emphasize rent-seeking by bureaucrats or capture by politicians and special interest groups. This paper documents a different pathology – rooted not in malfeasance but in systemic political failure to invest adequately in local state capacity – that we term bureaucratic overload. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries which measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that: i) resource scarcities force rural development officials to multi-task excessively; ii) the inability to focus on managerial activities harms the implementation of development programs; iii) bureaucratic overload is linked to an absence of electoral incentives for ruling parties to invest in local state capacity. The results provide a micro-level perspective on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak state capacity.

Keywords: Bureaucracy; Political Economy