Why Dominant Parties Decline: Evidence from India's Green Revolution

Abstract

How do dominant parties lose power? This paper highlights a “curse of strong roots. Excess organizational strength at early stages of party building leads to institutional capture by entrenched local party elites. This prevents adaptation when rising economic groups outside of the party mobilize politically, resulting in dominant party collapse. The theory is applied to India’s green revolution, a period of economic growth that transformed the countryside. The spread of high-yielding variety crops produced a rising commercial class in rural areas that sought greater political representation. This resulted in the dominant Congress party’s collapse in regions of initial (colonial era) organizational strength and institutional rigidity, where urban and upper caste local party elites blocked the incorporation of rising outsiders. Paradoxically, the Congress party was resilient in regions of initial organizational weakness and institutional flexibility. The argument is tested with a historical dataset on colonial-era party organization and post-independence high-yielding variety crop adoption and electoral outcomes. The findings highlight the role of an organizational resource curse in divergent pathways of dominant party collapse and resilience.