LAUSR

Abstract As a result of a constitutional amendment enacted in 1993, all levels of local government in India were required to reserve at least 33% of seats for women, without any corresponding reservations for women at the state or national level. We examine the upstream effects of this downstream quota on female political participation at the state and national level. Our results show that the introduction of the quota had significant positive impacts on the political participation of women both at the national and the state level, though the patterns of effects are quite different. Our results indicate that different mechanisms are driving more women running for office at the national and state levels.