Article
- +2
Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur, Annabel Miller, …
{
"authors": [
"Milan Vaishnav"
],
"type": "other",
"centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"
],
"collections": [],
"englishNewsletterAll": "ctw",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"programAffiliation": "SAP",
"programs": [
"South Asia"
],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"South Asia",
"India"
],
"topics": [
"Political Reform",
"Democracy"
]
}
Source: Getty
Other
Why Voters Sometimes Prefer Criminals as Candidates
Indian voters do not elect criminals out of ignorance. Instead, candidates with serious criminal records are sometimes preferred because their criminality signals their credibility.
Published on Oct 1, 2016
Source: Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions
In democracies around the world, candidates who stand accused or convicted of criminal misconduct routinely win elections and assume important positions. According to data collected by Transparência Brasil, 60% of Brazil’s federal legislators have either been convicted of a crime or are the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. Ahead of Nigeria’s 2015 election, candidates openly brandished their allegiances to militia groups or criminal gangs while canvassing for votes. The cozy relationship between criminal malfeasance and democratic politics is by no means restricted to the developing world. A May 2016 report in the New York Times revealed that as many as 30 current and former state legislators in New York have been convicted, indicted, or accused of engaging in criminal wrongdoing in the past decade alone.....
About the Author
Milan Vaishnav
Director and Senior Fellow, South Asia Program
Milan Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program and the host of the Grand Tamasha podcast at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary research focus is the political economy of India, and he examines issues such as corruption and governance, state capacity, federalism, and electoral behavior. He also conducts research on the Indian diaspora.
- How Indian Americans Plan to Vote in the 2026 Midterms
- How Populist Middle Powers Are—and Are Not—Reshaping Global PoliticsPaper
Christopher S. Chivvis, Rohan Mukherjee, Milan Vaishnav
Recent Work
Carnegie India does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie India
- Will a UN Treaty on Autonomous Weapons Arrive Too Late?Article
The final report by the Group of Governmental Experts is a key milestone toward a potential instrument regulating Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and has garnered both accolades and criticism.
Charukeshi Bhatt
- A Halting Turn: India’s Military TransformationCommentary
In any defense establishment, change is an ongoing process. However, despite the best of intentions, existing bureaucracies, bound by habit and years of socialization, have their limits in implementing transformative change.
Anit Mukherjee
- Build, Not Buy: The Semiconductor Lesson that Indian AI Experts Must LearnArticle
As AI grows more sophisticated, as the supply chains that power it become more contested, and as access to frontier models becomes geopolitically charged, India must begin to ask a different set of questions. Not what applications it can build on someone else’s infrastructure but what the world needs.
Konark Bhandari
- India’s Stake in the Global Subsea Cable RaceArticle
The Indian Ocean Region hosts one of the densest concentrations of subsea cables in the world. Yet, despite accounting for a significant share of global internet traffic, India’s participation remains limited.
Charukeshi Bhatt
- AI in Outer Space: Opportunities, Risks, and the Governance GapCommentary
How is AI reshaping space security, creating governance challenges, and where does international diplomacy stand today?
Tejas Bharadwaj, Almudena Azcárate Ortega
