Studies in Indian Politics

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 2321-0230

Issue Number

No. 12-2, December 2024

Latest documents

The Politics of Social Welfare: The BJP and the Discerning Voter
Voting studies tell us that voters reward incumbents who take care of the economic self-interest of voters. However, is the relationship between services and votes simple and straightforward? Are there conditions when welfare provisioning does not convert into votes for the incumbent? Data from the National Election Studies 2024 appears to suggest that voters are discerning and concerned about access issues when it comes to welfare delivery. Voters do not cast their votes only on whether they received private (welfare) benefits but also consider factors such as their experience and well-being while accessing those goods and services. Examining the relationship between welfare services and voting, the article demonstrates that individual-level processes are politically significant enough to influence vote choices between the benefits and the votes. These findings could inform scholarly studies and policy debates on social service delivery and vote choice.
Multinational Democratic Federations: Comparing India with Multi-level Systems from the Global North
In this article, we compare the Indian experience with that of some of the multinational and multi-level polities from the Global North, namely Belgium, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. We first summarize the essence of multinationalism. Drawing from our comparative examples of the Global North we then show how dominant narratives of state nationalism condition the extent to which the state can accommodate plurinational difference through self-rule, shared rule and ethno-symbolic recognition within these states, and then compare and contrast this with the Indian experience. Despite the stickiness of elite narratives on the meaning of the state during state formation and democratization, we highlight the ability of electoral competition to push multi-level politics into a more accommodative or majoritarian direction. We illustrate this with reference to India including the 2024 General Election Outcome.
Understanding India’s 18th Lok Sabha Election Outcome
Unpacking Public Satisfaction: An Analysis of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections
Voters’ perception of how satisfied they are with the work of the incumbent government is decisive for their voting decision, with satisfaction in most cases leading to support for the incumbent government and dissatisfaction leading to votes against it. This article is not about exploring the relationship between satisfaction with the incumbent party’s performance and voting for it. The main objective is to identify the factors that contribute to voter satisfaction. What aspects of the incumbent government’s performance or policy influence their positive assessment? Considering the election campaigns and prominent issues leading up to the elections and drawing insights from existing literature, this analysis examines the potential determinants of voter satisfaction. It aims to identify how these factors explain voter satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The findings reveal that voter satisfaction with the incumbent government during the 2024 Lok Sabha election was mainly influenced by recent and visible accomplishments rather than long-term factors. The construction of the Ram Mandir and positive evaluations of the government’s performance on economic issues played a significant role in increasing satisfaction.
Shaping of the Woman Constituency in Indian Elections: Evidence from the NES Data
This article studies the patterns of women’s vote in the Lok Sabha elections in India in 2024. It draws upon the National Election Studies (NES) data of 2024 and of previous years to address three key questions related to women’s vote in Indian elections. The first is about the extent of Indian women’s political participation in the wake of increased turnout of women voters and the closing of the gender gap. The second question is about the extent of women’s support to the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) as their favoured party. In the absence of conclusive evidence on gender-wise patterns of vote, there have been several tentative and speculative analyses regarding the increasing support of women voters to the BJP both at the regional and national elections, especially since 2014. The article uses the unique window of the NES data sets to understand and decipher women’s support for the BJP and other political parties on a timeline. Finally, from within the confines of the empirical evidence provided by the NES data sets, it also tries to address a rather nuanced question of the arrival of women’s agency in the electoral democracy in India. With the help of the NES data sets, it tries to understand whether women vote mainly as women, prioritizing their gendered identities over other kinds of identities, and whether their voting patterns indicate the arrival of an autonomous women’s constituency in Indian democracy.
Indian Muslims: (Self-)Perceptions and Voting Trends in 2024
There are two dominant explanations of contemporary Muslim voting behaviour. A section of public commentators reiterates an old argument that Muslims always participate in politics to defeat the BJP. This argument is not entirely incorrect. The BJP did not deviate from its Modi-centric Hindutva-driven campaign. The party relied heavily on an apparent anti-Muslim rhetoric to reach out to its core voters. The failure of the BJP to secure an absolute majority in Lok Sabha, in this sense, is also seen as an obvious outcome of this strategy. It is claimed that the BJP’s attempt to polarize voters on religious grounds encouraged Muslims to vote for non-BJP candidates throughout the country. The second explanation is more speculative. The INDIA alliance has so far tried to avoid any discussion on the overwhelming Muslim support they have received this time. The non-BJP parties, except a few, do not want to publicly acknowledge the fact that their success was almost impossible without active Muslim support. This kind of political reluctance is justified as a strategic silence. There is an assumption that the pro-Muslim gestures of these parties will make the Hindu voters unhappy. Findings of National Election Studies (NES) 2024 take us beyond these popular descriptions of Muslim voting. This survey introduces us to the complexities of contemporary Muslim politics and its electoral manifestations. This article tries to establish a link between Muslim self-perceptions as a religious minority in India and their political behaviour. We ask three basic questions: First, did Muslim communities vote more actively this time than Hindu communities? Second, did they vote as a homogeneous community or as a vote bank? And finally, did they vote basically to defeat BJP?
Editorial Note
The Leadership Factor in the 2024 Elections: Did Narendra Modi’s Impact Peak Much Before the Elections?
This article seeks to examine the role of the leadership factor in the 2024 elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made leadership the centre-piece of its campaign and appeal for votes. While the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) coalition consciously avoided a confrontation with the BJP around the leadership issue, this factor continued to assume salience during the campaign. By locating the debate in the wider context of the 2014 and 2019 elections, this article, assesses whether the impact of the leadership factor, especially in the case of BJP (and the National Democratic Alliance [NDA]) has plateaued and did not add any traction to the campaign of the ruling party. A set of questions asked in the National Election Study (NES) 2024 compared with data from NES 2014 and NES 2019 form the basis of the analysis.
The Great Transition Towards Populism in Indian Politics: Populist Attitudes and Populist Radical Right (PRR) Voting in the 2019 Indian General Election
While extant research has identified several determinants of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s unprecedented victory in the 2019 general election, they have overlooked the party’s populist radical right (PRR) nature, particularly under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Based on the demand side of PRR voting, this article examines the effect of Indian voters’ populist attitudes on their voting choices for the BJP during the 2019 election. Using binary logistic regression (BLR) and conducting a robustness check, this article identifies that the variable of individuals’ populist attitudes does indeed exert a significant effect on their vote choices for the BJP during the 2019 election. In addition to this main variable, a number of controls that were included in the analysis were also found to be significantly correlated with the dependent variable. In light of the findings, the article proposes some theoretical implications.
Book review: Eswaran Sridharan, Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent History
Eswaran Sridharan, Elections, Parties, and Coalitions in India: Theory and Recent History. Permanent Black. 359 pages. ₹1095.