10.7910/DVN/EO04JH Thomas, Anjali Anjali Thomas https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3514-291X Georgia Institute of Technology Gaikwad, Nikhar Nikhar Gaikwad https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9660-222X Columbia University Harvard Dataverse 2026 Social Sciences public service provision field experiment bureaucratic politics collective action urban politics civil society organizations Anjali Thomas Anjali Thomas Georgia Institute of Technology Nikhar Gaikwad Columbia University Anjali Thomas Anjali Thomas Georgia Institute of Technology 2026-02-09 2026-03-09 287844 1240352 77586 942826 9979 277804 39640 5622 text/tab-separated-values text/tab-separated-values text/x-r-notebook text/tab-separated-values text/x-r-notebook application/pdf text/x-r-notebook text/plain 1.0 Custom terms specific to this dataset Water is essential for human life, yet governments frequently leave vulnerable citizens to rely on informal channels for access. What can motivate governments to provide public services such as water to citizens trapped in informality? We theorize how accessing state services involves distinct strategic interactions between citizens, bureaucrats, and politicians at different formalization stages. A large factorial field experiment in Mumbai&apos;s informal settlements reveals that a bureaucratic facilitation drive significantly improved citizens&apos; ability to access municipal water connections in policy-eligible settlements, but only when combined with a bottom-up political coordination campaign targeting elected officials. While bureaucratic assistance helped citizens through the petitioning stage of the formalization process, political pressure was needed to ensure service delivery in the infrastructural stage more open to political influence. Our findings illuminate how specific citizen empowerment campaigns reshape the incentives of otherwise reluctant bureaucrats and politicians to provide marginalized groups their basic human rights. This dataset underwent an independent verification process, complying with the AJPS Verification Policy updated June 2023, which replicated the tables and figures in the primary article. For the supplementary materials, verification was performed solely for the successful execution of the code. The verification process was carried out by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences at Cornell University. <br></br> The associated article has been awarded the Open Materials Badge. Learn more about the Open Practice Badges from the <a href="https://www.cos.io/">Center for Open Science</a>. <br></br> <img src="https://socialsciences.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/2024-04/materials_large_color.png" alt="Open Materials Badge " width="60" height="60"> <br></br> Open Materials Badge