Votes for Water: Ethnic Service Delivery and Criminality in Karachi, Pakistan

How do voters in ethnically polarized settings evaluate coethnic candidates in an environment of hybrid provision of public goods, especially where such hybrid provision includes links to criminal actors? In numerous urban settings around the world, local public goods provision involves a complex mix of private vendors, state services, and criminal actors. This paper explores how voters in Karachi, Pakistan evaluate candidates making distinct claims to water provision. We present findings from a survey experiment of over 2000 Karachi residents surveyed in 2021–2022. We find that while voters generally prefer coethnic candidates regardless of their ability to provide water, a non-coethnic candidate’s access to the state water bureaucracy can decrease the coethnic advantage and increase the credibility of a non-coethnic candidate. This is particularly the case among voters least satisfied with their water supply and most reliant on private sources of water. However, contrary to literature that finds that criminality can signal competence or the likelihood of goods and services being directed to coethnics, ties to the illegal water mafia do not offer either coethnic or non-coethnic candidates any additional advantage.