Biography:

Roma Casamitjana is a first-year PhD student in Political Science at Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne. Her thesis focuses on Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) with a particular emphasis on their daily non-legislative activities, which are mainly to provide information and services to their constituents.

Since MLAs spend most of their time providing social services and coordinating the implementation of public programs and projects, they are crucial intermediaries between citizens and state authorities. However, MLAs use different strategies to negotiate and deploy public resources, as well as for delivering services and interacting with constituents. This research aims to understand the causes and effects of this variety of practices by considering for instance the social characteristics of MLAs, their partisan affiliation, their career and the different political contexts of Assam and Meghalaya.