Think of coalition politics in India, and to any student of Indian politics, the first name that comes to mind is likely to be Eswaran Sridharan. Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent History brings together a collection of his articles on various issues that have shaped Indian politics since 1989. The themes covered include party system transformation, the rise and decline of political parties, political finance, and various aspects of coalition politics. Though they have previously appeared in academic journals and edited volumes, having them in one place will give that scholarship a wider audience.
Sridharan’s work embraces ingenuity and rigour, combines theory with empiricism, and covers various related areas, including party politics and party systems, coalition studies, electoral politics and political economy.
Focus on ground realities
Some coalition studies focus on theory building and avoid getting into the messy empirical details of how parties and leaders behave in the actual world. While these studies give us sophisticated models, they are often far removed from reality. At the same time, in the context of India, description has frequently triumphed over explanation. Description without an explanatory framework is tedious and vacuous and does not help understand or explain phenomena. Theory and empiricism must complement each other as they do in Sridharan’s work to be helpful.
Two features consistently stand out in his work. First, he is squarely rooted in the ‘soft-rational choice’ tradition, which assumes that the actions of human beings are purposive and goal-motivated but not necessarily wholly directed to maximising individual benefits as assumed by the ‘hard-rational choice’ school. While political parties are motivated by election and re-election, they are also constrained by policy preferences, goals, and values.
Second, Sridharan’s explanatory framework is located in the institutional school. This approach has significantly contributed to our understanding of coalition behaviour in the context of India and has also enriched comparative studies. Most coalition propositions have primarily been derived from the experiences of political systems that are unitary rather than federal, use a proportional representative system (PR) of electoral laws rather than the first-past-the-post system and are consensual rather than majoritarian parliamentary systems. Sridharan’s work underlines the inadequacies of conventional theoretical propositions drawn from particular institutional settings.
Three findings
Three particular findings from Sridharan’s work about the first-past-the-post system and Duvergerian dynamics and how they change the incentive structure for political parties are worth highlighting. First, unlike proportional representative systems, where post-electoral alliances are the norm, there is an incentive for pre-electoral coalitions and alliances under the first-past-the-post systems to prevent the wastage of votes. Second, he also pointed out that a small vote swing in the first-past-the-post systems could disproportionately impact seat shares. Third, third-placed parties/candidates in such a system could become pivotal players if they play their cards correctly.
On the federal dimension, there are two noteworthy contributions. First, Sridharan finds that the division of power between multiple levels of government makes the State-level power politically attractive for parties to form single-State parties. Duvergerian dynamics then lead to two-party or bipolar state-party systems. Given the cultural and linguistic differences across the country and the variation in the politicisation of cleavages, we could have multiple bipolarities that could lead to a multi-party system at the federal level.
Bharatiya Janata Party supporters at a rally. | Photo Credit: ANI
BJP’s alliance strategy
Second, he demonstrates that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strategically entered into alliances, leveraging its third-party position in different parts of the country to expand its geographical footprint. This “bridging alliance” strategy enabled the BJP to overcome numerous deficiencies that led to the fall of the government in 1996. It allowed the BJP to spread out and increase its numbers, create a pool of supporters, and, more importantly, check the Congress, the other main polity-wide party. This desire to become coalitionable gave State-based parties a greater say at the national level. Territorial compatibility and alliances have since become the main coalition-enabling component of India’s coalitional system.
In coalition studies, minority governments were considered to be a product of a particular institutional milieu. Sridharan’s studies have shown they could also form in executive-dominated majoritarian systems under three conditions. First, minority governments can survive when the opposition is ideologically divided. Second, the Indian parliamentary rules only require governments to show that the majority does not oppose them rather than demonstrate a majority. Third, federal systems allow for payoffs to be collected at different levels. Fourth, the party competition at the state level could create a “lock-in” effect, which creates space for the working and survival of minority governments.
Congress’ role
On the survival of the Congress party, he notes that it would be tough to recover as an umbrella party given the social and economic transformation that has taken place. Given the changes in the political economy, the Congress would have to reinvent itself, balancing growth and equity. He warns that pushing itself to become a ‘pro-poor party’ could be self-limiting when a large section of the electorate identifies as middle class.
On the lesser-studied aspect of political financing, Sridharan notes that parties’ and donors’ incentives must align. The lack of transparency currently suits both the donor and the political party. This explains why, despite the heavy regulation of political finance on paper, enough loopholes allow for a de-facto laissez-faire regime.
India had been an outlier in comparative politics for a long time, and Sridharan’s contribution has shown that India cannot only be compared but also contributes to theory building and testing. All those who want to make sense of the current turn to power sharing and coalition governments at the centre, should read this book.
Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent History; Eswaran Sridharan, Permanent Black, ₹1,095.
The reviewer is with the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad.
