Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Terminology
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theory
- Part II Data
- 6 India as a Patronage-Democracy
- 7 The Bahujan Samaj Party (Bsp) and the Scheduled Castes (SCs)
- 8 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 9 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 10 Why Sc Voter Preferences Translate into Bsp Votes
- 11 Explaining Different Head Counts in the Bsp and Congress
- 12 Extending the Argument to Other Ethnic Parties in India: The Bjp, The Dmk, and The Jmm
- 13 Ethnic Head Counts and Democratic Stability
- Appendix A Elite Interviews
- Appendix B Ethnographies of Election Campaigns
- Appendix C Content Analysis
- Appendix D Description of Survey Data
- Appendix E Description of the Ecological Inference (EI) Method
- Appendix F Method Used to Estimate Ethnic Voting Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
6 - India as a Patronage-Democracy
from Part II - Data
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Terminology
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theory
- Part II Data
- 6 India as a Patronage-Democracy
- 7 The Bahujan Samaj Party (Bsp) and the Scheduled Castes (SCs)
- 8 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 9 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 10 Why Sc Voter Preferences Translate into Bsp Votes
- 11 Explaining Different Head Counts in the Bsp and Congress
- 12 Extending the Argument to Other Ethnic Parties in India: The Bjp, The Dmk, and The Jmm
- 13 Ethnic Head Counts and Democratic Stability
- Appendix A Elite Interviews
- Appendix B Ethnographies of Election Campaigns
- Appendix C Content Analysis
- Appendix D Description of Survey Data
- Appendix E Description of the Ecological Inference (EI) Method
- Appendix F Method Used to Estimate Ethnic Voting Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
The state is everywhere. Life chances are influenced by the state. If you don't have access to the state, life is difficult.
Those who rule have everything. Those who do not rule have nothing.
The state is widely perceived as a ‘grace and favour’ state; state officials tend to be seen, and see themselves, as dispensers of favours. It is widely assumed that if an official wishes to do something for you he can, and the problem is how to make him want to.
In Part I, I argued that the patronage-democracy was a distinct type of democracy, with distinct patterns of voting behaviour and therefore distinct conditions leading to ethnic party success. In this chapter, I propose an interpretation of the Indian political system as a patronage-democracy. This interpretation applies broadly to postcolonial India, from independence in 1947 until the present. The Indian state is currently undergoing two major structural changes: the deregulation of the Indian economy and the decentralization of political power. So far, however, these changes have not been of sufficient magnitude to alter the nature of India's patronagedemocracy.
Virtually every major study of Indian politics and political economy has remarked upon India's dominant state and the extent to which voting behaviour in India is conditioned by expectations of access to the state.4 This chapter builds upon this previous literature in order to advance two further arguments. First, it argues that the essential element influencing voting behaviour in India is not simply the dominance of the state, but the ability of those who control the state to exercise discretion in the implementation of state policy. Second, whereas previous studies have analyzed state dominance and ethnic politics as two parallel processes, this chapter proposes a connection between the two: The individualized distribution of benefits at the disposal of those who control the dominant state, I argue here, produces and sustains ethnic politics in India.
Section I describes the discretionary control of the Indian state over jobs, livelihoods, and living conditions and shows that those who hold state office have considerable opportunity for rent seeking in the implementation of state policy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Why Ethnic Parties SucceedPatronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India, pp. 115 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004