India's urban slums exhibit arresting variation in their access to basic public goods and services - paved roads, piped water, trash removal, sewers, streetlights. Why are some vulnerable communities able to demand and secure development from the state while others fail? Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the cities of Bhopal and Jaipur, Demanding Development accounts for the uneven success of India's slum residents in claiming public services. Auerbach's theory centers on the political organization of slums and the informal leaders who spearhead resident efforts to petition the state for public services. He finds that underneath the rough-and-tumble surface of electoral politics in India's cities lies striking variation in the extent to which networks of party workers have spread across slums. Demanding Development shows how this variation in the concentration and partisan distribution of party workers across settlements has powerful consequences for the ability of residents to politically mobilize and improve local conditions.

Adam Michael Auerbach is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington DC. His doctoral dissertation won the Best Fieldwork Award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Best Dissertation Award from the Urban and Local Politics Section of APSA, and APSA's Gabriel A. Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics. Auerbach's research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. His research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Contemporary South Asia, the Journal of Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, and World Politics.