Author: Zoya Hasan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 566
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195655966
Description
This volume brings together essays on wide ranging issues that impinge on party politics and the challenges confronting the party system.
This volume brings together essays on wide ranging issues that impinge on party politics and the challenges confronting the party system. Together, it presents an overall picture of the origins, evolution and transformation of party politics by focusing on important parties and their organization and politics since Independence. The introductory chapter provides an outline of the main phases in the development of the party system and the role of social cleavages, political mobilization and electoral change in understanding party politics. It raises a number of questions of general interest: What are the conditions under which parties and party systems change? How has the party system managed to cope with social change? How do we understand the contemporary party system and its impact on democracy?
Essays following the introductory chapter focus on the development and decline of the Congress party and the problems facing the once dominant Congress party in its pursuit of political support in the Post-Nehru period. The second section concentrates on the dramatic rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, on the nature and character of Hindu nationalism, and its impact on the ideology and social base of the party. Essays in the third section examine how and why the Communists came to power, the Socialist style of politics of the Janata Party/Dal, the strategies of Dravidian parties, and the interactions of parties and society in reshaping ethnic identities and politics.
The final section focuses on the transformation of the party system, the growth of coalition politics, and the emergence of the federal arena in which state politics and state-based parties command greater weight and authority.
The selection of major writing on the party system and party politics provide arguments on the interplay of caste, class and ethnicity, the relationship between state, society and democracy, the rise of coalition politics, and the organizational crumbling of parties and the new predicaments ahead of the multiparty system.
This volume will be invaluable for college and university students, and also for general readers, interested in the dynamics of much-debated subject of party politics in India.
Contents
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction: Conflict Pluralism and the Competitive Party System in India
PART I: THE DOMINANCE AND DECLINE OF THE CONGRESS
1. The Congress ‘System’ in India
2. Social Cleavages, Elections, and the Indian Party System
3. Mrs. Gandhi’s Pyramid: The New Congress
4. The United Colors of Congress: Social Profile of Congress Voters, 1996 and
1998
PART II: THE RISE AND GROWTH OF HINDU NATIONALIST POLITICS
5. The Leadership and Organization of the Jana Sangh, 1951 to 1967
6. A Specific Party-building Strategy: The Jana Sangha and the RSS Network
7. Antomy of BJP’s Rise to Power: Social, Regional, and Political Expansion in
1990s
8. The Rebirth of the Shiv Sena: the Symbiosis of Discursive and Organization
Power
PART III: RADICAL POLITICS AND LEFT PARTIES
9. Communist Politics in Search of Hagemony
10. Parliamentary Communism as a Historical Phenomenon: The CPI(M) in West
Bengal
PART IV: SOCIAL DIVERSITY AND PARTY POLITICS
11. The Janata Phase: Reorganization and Redirection in Indian Politics
12. Representation and Redistribution: The New Lower Caste Politics of North India
13. Bringing Society Back In: Ethnicity, Populism, and Pluralism in South India
PART V: POLITICAL COMPETITION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE PARTY SYSTEM
14. Parties and the Party System
15. The Fragmentation of the Indian Party System 1952-1999
16. The Political Parties and the Party System: The Emergence of New Coalitions
Annotated Bibliography
Index