Dr Adam Ziegfeld awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant

Dr Adam Ziegfeld has been awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant for Understanding Vote Choice in India: A new dataset on candidates for legislative office. The project will run from 15 September 2010 to 14 March 2011.

Adams research aims to understand some of the factors that shape the decisions that voters make in the worlds largest democracy, India. Specifically, which matters more in vote choice: party or candidate? To assess the relative importance of voters loyalties to parties versus their evaluations of specific candidates, he proposes to create a unique dataset on the characteristics of candidates running for office. Linking these data to aggregate election outcomes will allow him to test whether election outcomes depend more on candidate quality or on voters attachments to parties. Finding evidence in favour of the importance of candidates would suggest that the logic of electoral politics in a country such as India is very different from that which prevails in the affluent democracies of Europe and North America. Adam will carry out this project in the North Indian state of Haryana.

Adam Ziegfeld is Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.