Do voters count? Institutions, voter turnout, and public goods provision in India

• We model the joint effects of turnout and fragmentation on public goods provision.
• Our sample is a time-series cross-section of Indian states since 1967.
• Party fragmentation reduces public goods, but high voter turnout offsets this effect.
• Turnout increases public goods, but only when party fragmentation is high.
• These results add insight into budgets and the importance of voter participation.

Why do some governments prioritize policies that are welfare-improving for many citizens while others concentrate state resources on improving the lot of only a few individuals? Existing research focuses on institutional factors such as regime type and the structure of party systems, but is largely silent on the role of political participation in shaping governments' spending priorities. This paper leverages variation in turnout across Indian state assembly elections from 1967 to 2004 to identify the conditions under which participation matters for government spending. We find that turnout matters in fragmented party systems but has little impact in states characterized by two-party competition. This result has important implications for theories of democratic politics and public good provision.