Shagun Gupta

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I’m a fourth year PhD Student and Adjunct Instructor at the School of International Service (SIS), American University, Washington, D.C.

My research focuses on public trust in local governments, with an emphasis on variation in trust in municipal governance bodies among residents of unauthorized colonies in Delhi, India. I use network analysis and survey methods to investigate the strength of household ties to neighborhood associations, focusing specifically on localized forms of perceived effective capacity as mechanisms that influence trust in government at the local level. From 2019-2021, I assisted Prof. Adam Auerbach at SIS with his research on urban distributive politics and informality in India and conducted primary interviews and translations as well as assisted with survey design.

Prior to coming to AU, I lived and worked in Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand, where my research focused on financial inclusion, gender, and migration. I also have professional experience with program design, monitoring and evaluation and conflict sensitivity analyses for development projects managed by large international organizations, including the United Nations.

I hold an M.Sc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Political Science from Hindu College, University of Delhi.

You can access my CV here.

All photography on this website is original and copyright of the site owner.

Research

In Progress: Public Goods and Public Trust in Government: Evidence from India

Abstract: In modern liberal democracies, the relationship between citizens and their governments is influenced by myriad factors that shape how citizens perceive the state as well as the act of governance itself. One of the ways governments might try to gain favor with their citizens is the provision of public goods, which is considered economically efficient as well as morally necessary (Anomaly 2015). Despite huge public expenditure on services such as healthcare, education, sanitation, electricity and water supply, we know very little about whether access to public goods leads to public trust in government. Such a connection is logical — the provision of public goods is an important aspect of ‘good governance’. I test this assumption in India, a highly diverse liberal democracy that is characterized by socio-economic variations between states as well as huge disparities in income and access to basic services, where the provision of such services by the government can influence public confidence or trust in the government. I define provision in terms of availability of basic public goods to households at the state level in India, and drawing on earlier work I measure public trust in terms of the confidence people have in their state governments in India to take care of their basic needs. Using cross-sectional survey data, I show not only that the provision of public goods is associated with increased trust or confidence in state governments, but that access to health, education, sanitation and water supply are the most important such public goods. The findings have the potential to inform policy choices about the provision of public service programs in India as well a broader understanding of the relationship between public services and trust in government.

Conference presentations:

Accepted for presentation at the 2nd edition of the International Workshops on Public Policy at La Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencas Sociales (FLASCO) Ecuador / Quito from 1st – 3rd July 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19).
American University Tri-School Conference, 5th March 2021 in Washington, D.C.
5th International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP5) held July 5th-9th, 2021 in Barcelona, Spain.
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA) held September 30th – October 2nd, 2021 in Seattle, Washington, USA.

In Progress: Analysis of News Media Coverage Before and After the March 2020 Nationwide Lockdown in India

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the world. In India, it has revealed deep inequalities that persist in access to healthcare services in the country and the precariousness of the informal economy which was hit hard by a nationwide lockdown announced in late March 2020. The lockdown resulted in an unprecedented mass movement of people across the country, notably migrant workers in megacities such as Delhi. We know that such nationwide lockdowns have been covered extensively by the media in various countries, and India is no exception. However, we know very little about the nature of such coverage in India. What were the key topics emphasized by news outlets while reporting on the COVID-19 first wave in India, and were there significant differences in coverage before and after the lockdown was imposed on 24^th March 2020? Using the CRISP-DM approach, this paper identifies the key themes discussed across reports from one major English news aggregator – Inshorts. A text analysis of news reports from this highly popular news source reveals the pre-dominant media attitudes that shaped how the crisis was reported, taking on a communal nature that targeted the Muslim community. The paper contributes to a burgeoning literature on the role of media during crises, and the critical role it plays in shaping citizen attitudes as well as government policies.

Conference presentations:

5th annual Politics and Computational Social Science (PaCSS) conference held June 16th-18th, 2022 at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University in Boston, MA.
Accepted for presentation at the APSA Pre-Conference in Political Communication to be held in Montreal, Canada in September 2022.

Click here to follow my work on ResearchGate.