Are political attitudes affected by which of their multiple ethnic identities is most salient for a person? If each ethnic identity comes with certain social norms that are practiced and enforced by an ethnic group, then making one identity salient over another should restrict the choice space of acceptable behavior and attitudes accordingly. I test this theory using particularly meaningful attitudes: men’s attitudes toward women’s political and economic participation, which have been shown to affect women’s labor force participation and partaking in the political process around the world. Using an original online survey experiment in India, I show that it indeed matters which ethnic identity is most salient for a man. Males who were primed on their religious identity showed less support for women’s political and economic participation than those in the control group. The results were less clear-cut for the caste condition that primed men on their caste identity: while males self-identifying as Brahmins, members of other forward castes or Dalits increased their support for women’s participation when treated, men who belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) lowered their support when treated.
Do economic conditions affect ethnic parties’ electoral fortunes? Using insights from research on ethnic parties, ethnic mobilization and economic voting, this paper suggests they do. In a patronage democracy like in India in particular, where people are dependent on the state for essential goods and services, this dependency can be expected to change with shifts in economic performance. And while economic shocks have been shown to often incite violence, research also suggests that sometimes, voting for ethnic parties can be a substitute for ethnic violence (or follow ethnic violence) in order to gain access to the state. I test this economic theory of ethnic voting using district-level data from across Indian states. A regression analysis shows a strong negative correlation between economic growth and the vote share captured by ethnic parties. An IV analysis using rainfall as an instrument for economic growth provides first evidence that this relationship might be causal.