How parties impact the trajectories of federalism: India

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the interface between the party system and the trajectories of center-state interactions in independent India. It argues that the Constituent Assembly put in place a strong-center model of federalism, giving the center much greater leverage than the states. The structural features envisaged in the constitution implicitly give us the image of a rigid framework and do not account for the dynamic nature of federalism. The discussion in the article, however, shows that there have been periods when the central state has been able to achieve a greater level of vertical integration, overriding the existing institutional frameworks. This has occurred whenever a party, owing to a lack of federal political culture and being under a person-centered leadership, managed to achieve polity-wide legislative dominance. Whenever it happens, the constituent states are reduced to more like administrative units, accepting directives from the center, as the existing federal safeguard mechanism loses its efficacy. However, here again the degree of integration has varied depending on the ruling strategy of the party leader, the party’s internal structure, and the level of resistance put up by the state units, and the opposition parties. In sharp contrast, when, due to political and economic transitions, the state-based parties gained prominence at the national level, then they invariably pushed for greater decentralization, strengthening the existing federal institutional safeguards, and striving to make the constituent states more autonomous political and economic units.