Party Competition in Indian States

Book excerpt: Ever since the Congress system finally collapsed and the post-Congress polity emerged in 1989, state has arisen as the most crucial terrain at which electoral outcomes are shaped. This book presents analyses of electoral politics in 24 states of India during the period 2008-2013. This period is of great interest because in the post-2004 period, Congress started adapting itself to the compulsions of the post-Congress polity and survive as one of the competitors in electoral politics. In a sense, the period under study here is the period of a stable post-Congress polity. Apart from the parliamentary election of 2009 that brought the Congress-led UPA back to power with an increased strength of the Congress party, this period also witnessed assembly elections in each of the states discussed here. The chapters look both at the Parliamentary election of 2009 and the Assembly election from each state to investigate how the two impact each other and what broader patterns emerge from their interaction. While the all-India picture of competitive politics presented the picture of routineness of electoral competition, many states threw up characteristics of a much more fluid competitive politics. This volume brings out this complex pattern of electoral politics at the state level and seeks to contribute to our understanding of state level political processes by using the rich data set of post-election surveys done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi over the years.