Abstract
This special issue examines the patterns, causes and consequences of India's 16th parliamentary elections. The 2014 elections broke records in terms of levels of voter participation, election expenditure and the number of political parties fielding candidates. The outcome marked a break from the past 30 years of India's electoral history with a single party – the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party led by Narendra Modi – achieving a parliamentary majority on its own, without depending on coalition partners. Yet not all was new: there were strong continuities amid the change. In this collection, scholars present explanations for the BJP's success, analyse the extent to which urbanisation has acted as a disruptive force for electoral politics, look at the significance of a focus on leaders over political parties in the election campaign, assess the implications of the election result for the Indian party system and examine state-level contests in which regional parties held out against the BJP wave.
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