Party System In India Research Articles

The Dynamics of Party System in India: A Comparative Study of National and Regional Parties

The purpose of the study is the structure of political parties and comparative analysis of the party system in the Republic of India. The objective of the research is to investigate the functioning of the parties, power structure, dynamics and their role in forming the government at the centre and state levels in the country. In addition, the study analyses the approaches of the parties as an actor to make a coalition government in various provincial governments. The research used comparative method analysis to achieve the purpose of this study and describe the source methods for testing the research objectives. The study finds the comprehensive relevance of parties’ role in the Indian political system. Finally, the result of the article finds as a conclusion that the multi-party system provides multiple opportunities for people to participate in the democratic process in India.

The Rise of the Second Dominant Party System in India: BJP’s New Social Coalition in 2019

The social coalition that supported the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 mirrored the demographic profile of the Hindu society. The party made substantial gains among the lower castes, the poor, rural voters, and less educated. How did BJP manage to attract these new voters? We argue that the immediate context of 2019 elections along with a profound ideological shift in Indian politics lies at the heart of the BJP’s success. Underpinning the short-term factors of Modi’s popularity, BJP’s organizational advantage, heightened nationalistic sentiments, and expansive welfare politics, a new form of ethno-political majoritarianism delinked from religious Hindu nationalism was key to the party’s ability to attract new voters.

Change and continuity in Indian politics and the Indian party system

The 2014 Indian general election was notable due to a single party – the Bharatiya Janata Party – winning a majority of seats in Lok Sabha for the first time since 1984. The Congress, the other main national party, suffered its worst ever defeat. This election was viewed by some as signalling the advent of a phase of a BIP-dominated party system in India. In this article, I revisit the results of this election, and of the subsequent state assembly elections, to analyse if they signal a substantial change in the political landscape and party system in India. I argue that although the Congress decline has continued, and the BJP has won many recent state assembly elections, it is premature to conclude that the Indian party system has shifted to a BJP-dominated one. Further, given India’s first-past-the-post electoral system and a diffused political environment, where state and regional parties continue to be strong in many parts of the country, achieving a legislative majority remains a difficult proposition for a single party.

Public Participation in the General Elections of India: An Overview since 1951

Democratic process of any country is based on the participation of the public to form the government through their elected representatives, and the nation having an electoral system in place to choose their representatives can be termed as a nation living true to its democratic essence, while as, the nation elusive of ground level public participation in forming governments can never be termed as living true to democratic colour. The present study is an attempt to understand the electoral process of India, the public participation in the democratic process of the country, which is already fifteen general elections old, lasted over the period 1951 to 2014. Attempt has been made to understand the areas like, growth of parties over the period of time, seat distribution, reservation of seats, electoral participation, polling stations, performance of major national political parties along with electoral turnout both collectively and on gender basis etc. Existence of the multi party system in India and the growth in parties over a period of time gets equally reflected by the fact that in 1951, 54 parties participated in the electoral process and the number grew up to 466 in 2014, reflecting a growth of over 792%. During all the general elections contested by candidates 77.43% contestants forfeited their deposits with an average of 135 political parties contested each general election. Over 80.45% elected candidates to the parliament during all the general elections held so far, represent national parties.

Book Review: Ajay K. Mehra (ed.), Party System in India: Emerging Trajectories

Ajay K. Mehra (ed.), Party System in India: Emerging Trajectories. New Delhi: Lancer Publishers. 2013. 533 pages. ₹ 995.

The Transition of Party System in India : From Polarized Pluralism to Moderate Pluralism

The Transition of Party System in India : From Polarized Pluralism to Moderate Pluralism

Election and Party System in India's Democracy

Election and Party System in India's Democracy

The Institutionalisation of Parties and the Consolidation of the Party System in India: Criteria, State and Causes of Persistent Defects

Indian parties and the party system in India are only partly consolidated resp. institutionalised, according to the usual criteria, distilled from the experience of Western parties. This is so in spite of the long tradition of Indian parties, their large membership base, organisational complexity and independence from interest groups and in spite of their dominant position in regard to political leadership recruitment or the government agenda. Causes for the institutional deficits of parties lie in the prevalence of factional conflicts, clientelistic linkages between party leaders and member, and the parties' weak financial basis (compensated by tapping unorthodox sources of finance). These phenomena are responsible for the only very limited level of internal party democracy in India.

The Congress Party Model: South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and India's Indian National Congress (INC) as Dominant Parties

AbstractThe paper argues that the model developed to analyze the dominance of the Indian National Congress of the political party system during the first two decades of independence helps in our understanding of the unfolding party system in South Africa. A comparison of the Congress Party and the African National Congress suggests many similarities. The paper is divided into three broad sections. The first part focuses on the dominant party system in India. In the second part, I apply the model of the Congress System to South Africa. I argue that the three features of the Congress System – a dominant party with mass based legitimacy, constituted by many factions and operating on the idiom of consensus-seeking internal politics, and sources of opposition who cooperate with factions in the dominant party to influence the political agenda – prevails in South Africa. In the third part, I draw on the comparison between the ANC and Congress Party to account for why certain nationalist movements become dominant parties. I emphasize that broad nationalist movements displaying high degrees of legitimacy and embracing democratic practices are adaptive to changing contexts and develop organizational mechanisms to manage internal party conflict. They contribute to the consolidation of democracy rather than undermine it.

Economic liberalisation, social transformation and the party system in India

Economic liberalisation, social transformation and the party system in India

System of Political Parties in India

The Indian party system is a most unusual phenomenon, for at least two reasons. First, its form differs totally from the so-called Duverger laws under which a country which in elections to the lower chamber of its parliament, uses the one-round relative plurality system, should have a bipartisan regime. But the form of the party system in India is multi-partisanism. The second reason why the author turns his attention to the Indian party system is the fact that the party regime in question has changed from a system of one predominant party (the Indian National Congress) to a classic multi-party system; this occurred essentially in the early 1980s when a new relevant political subject – the Indian People's Party (BJP) – came to the fore and took its place next to the traditional centre-left Indian National Congress. First of all, one has to understand the complex nature of the Indian party spectrum where, on the basis of clear criteria, only 42 of the total number of 654 parties are officially recognized and registered; of these, seven are regarded as national parties (that is all-Indian, federal), and thirty-five as state parties (i.e. regional).The author asks himself two fundamental questions in the article: What is the reason for the multi-party system in India? What polarity does this Indian multi-party regime reveal? India is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural formation, and consequently the variety of parties is nothing unusual. Each of the twenty-five states making up the Indian Union has in most cases a population of different nationalities and ethnic origin, the interests of this population are presented by their own regional (in the Indian context, state) parties. But precisely because of the electoral system to the lower chamber of the federal parliament (the People's parliament), these small political subjects have become immensely significant elements. If they are successful in the elections, the INC and the BJP are directly dependent on these small regional parties which can either support INC or BJP minority governments, or become part of government coalitions where the INC or the BJP are the nucleus. As regards the second question, the author tends to the opinion that the current Indian extreme and fragmented multi-partisanship must be regarded as bipolar (the INC and the BJP are two poles), since the potential third pole – the United Front (UF) – (an expedient block of a number of very different parties) appears to be most unstable. The UF turns into the relevant third force only during an election campaign or when it succeeds in becoming the ruling party (there was a UF minority government in 1996-1997, supported by the Congress Party). When the UF is an opposition group (as after the 1998 elections) it is a subject that becomes entirely inconsistent. That is why we cannot regard it as a firm third pole in the Indian multi-party system.

Political parties and party systems

Introduction - Ajay K Mehra Historical Development of the Party System in India - Ajay K Mehra Federalisation of India's Party System - Balveer Arora The Party System in Germany and Party Fragmentation in the European Union - Karl-Rudolf Korte Social, Cultural and Economic Dimensions of the Party System - Amit Prakash How Many Parties Are Too Many? - Pran Chopra The Electoral Framework, Process and Political Parties - Madhav Godbole Parties, Civil Society and the State in India - S K Chaube The Congress and the BJP - Partha S Ghosh Struggle for the Heartland The Third Front or the Third Force - Bidyut Chakrabarty A Political Maze or an Ideological Oasis? The Third Force - Muchkund Dubey As an Ideology and as a Reality The National Parties and the Regional Allies - Pradeep Kumar A Study in the Social-Political Dynamics The Regional Parties and Democracy - Suhas Palshikar Romantic Rendezvous or Localised Legitimation? The Contest for the Marginal Space - Sajal Nag Parties and Politics in Small Indian States Mediating Economic Reforms - Harish Khare Party Politics From Bangalore to Chennai Local Democracy and Political Parties in India - Sandeep Shastri

Towards a More Competitive Party System in India

Towards a More Competitive Party System in India

Towards a More Competitive Party System in India

THE YEAR 1977 represents a distinct watershed in the evolution of Indian polity. The Parliamentary elections held in March of that year gave a decisive blow to the authoritarian experiment of emergency rule, brought about a major shift in voting trends, and altered drastically the basic structure of the party system. The electoral change of 1977 has affected both the pattern of voters' choice as well as the institutional framework of party politics. It brought about an end of the System and in its place ushered in a rather nebulous two-party system. It should be admitted that the situation is still fuzzy and fluid and the shape of the emerging party system is not yet clear. Both the major parties-the Congress and the Janata-are experiencing stresses and strains that may generate skepticism about their long term viability. This makes conceptualization of the emergent situation a somewhat hazardous task. However, the task of conceptualizing the emerging pattern can no longer be postponed. Understanding the power structure and operational dynamics of the emerging system is too vital and crucial to the twin tasks of political reconstruction and economic recovery to permit a wait for more certain times. A meaningful conceptualization would have to take into account five major themes: (1) the nature and significance of the change of 1977; (2) the emergent party system and its comparison with the earlier model; (3) the viability of the new system; (4) the nature of party