This paper contributes to the conflicting literature about indirect rule by delivering a new theoretical explanation for the persistent effects of indirect rule on contemporary provision of public goods. It looks at a single region of India which has areas that historically experienced both direct and indirect rule. The theoretical mechanism focuses on the principal-agent problem and the incentives that it produces for local leaders. Unlike local princes, colonizers were under stricter oversight and had to be more accountable to the top due to the obligations to extract resources. A spatial regression discontinuity design is used to compare directly and indirectly ruled territories. The empirical results show that indirect rule has predominantly long-term negative effects on the provision of selected public goods.

Rural residents are typically construed as being more conservative than urban residents. Is this true, or do rural residents carry unique interests from Republicans or conservatives? Using the 2020 ANES, we compare responses from 22 national issues by interacting urban and rural residency with Republican and Democrat identification. We find that issue preferences are partisan, not place-based: rural Democrats resemble their urban counterparts and urban Republicans resemble their rural counterparts, rather than rural areas specifically being more Republican. However, rural Democrats are more conservative than urban Democrats on issues relating to immigration, transgendered people in the military, and income inequality. These results point to partisan nationalization in issue stances, with exceptions, and that rural is not always Republican.