Do Politicians in Power Receive Special Treatment in Courts? Evidence from India

Abstract

Abstract Do politicians in power receive special treatment in courts? I study judicial discrimination in the world's largest democracy, India, by analyzing whether pending criminal cases against politicians who marginally win their election are more likely to be closed without a conviction than cases against politicians who marginally lose their election. I find that winning office increases the chances of a favorable outcome only for politicians from the ruling party. Evidence suggests two main explanations for this result: (1) members of the legislative assemblies aligned with the ruling party misuse executive powers to manipulate prosecutors and police officers, and (2) witnesses turn hostile in high‐profile criminal cases.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.