Age and Party Choice: Generational Shift in India
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231203784 |
| Author | K. K. Kailash |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
Age and Party Choice:
Generational Shift in India
K. K. Kailash1
Abstract
India is in the throes of a massive demographic turn. People born and brought up after 1986 constitute
the bulk of the population. Studies elsewhere show that generational replacement transforms societies
and can play a key role in changing the political attitudes and behaviour of the electorate. Over the last
few general elections the Indian National Congress has witnessed a steady decline in support, while
the Bharatiya Janata Party has seen a surge in support. This article examines whether the decline of
the Congress party is linked to a demographic shift that is taking place. The study demonstrates that
generations as socio-historical space helps us nuance party-choice explanations.
Keywords
Generations, demographic change, India, Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, political
parties, elections, dominant party system
India is in the throes of a massive demographic turn. A simultaneous decline in birth rates and an increase
in life expectancy will make India look very different 20 years from now. The broad contours of this
change are already visible. Today, people born and brought up after 1986 constitute the bulk of the
population, and over 40% of India’s population is under 20. Today’s youth will constitute an overwhelming
majority of the population since newer cohorts are likely to live longer than previous generations.
Generational replacement transforms societies and can play a key role in changing the political
attitudes and behaviour of the electorate, as studies from the United States (Andersen, 1979), the United
Kingdom (Butler & Stoke, 1974) and Israel (Abramson, 1979) show. In India, we have witnessed a
steady decline in support for the Indian National Congress, henceforth Congress, and a surge for the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the last few elections. Is this decline of the Congress linked to a
demographic shift that is taking place?
While there are reasoned explanations for the decline of the Congress, there has probably been no
systematic attempt to examine the impact of a generational turnover on the party system. This article
asks two questions. First, do diverse age groups have typical political choices? Second, following from
the first, if there are differences, are these a result of long-term generational divergence?
Original Article
Studies in Indian Politics
11(2) 208–224, 2023
© 2023 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230231203784
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
1 Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Corresponding author:
K. K. Kailash, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Telangana 500046, India.
E-mail: kailashkk@uohyd.ac.in
Kailash 209
The article is organized into five sections. In the first section, I review the literature on political choice
in India and studies on generational change and party choice elsewhere. Then I offer a framework to
explain the relationship between party choice and age. The following section describes the empirical
strategy and the data used to test the research hypotheses. The penultimate section presents the results
from the data analysis and draws some tentative conclusions about the population characteristics of the
sample regarding party choices. The final section summarizes and concludes.
Review of Literature
A combination of social structural and contextual factors are the dominant explanatory variables in the
research on vote choice in India. A bulk of the contributions predominantly focus on social-structural
factors, including caste (Verma, 2009; Yadav & Palshikar, 2009), gender (Deshpande, 2004, 2009), reli-
gion (Alam, 2009) and location (Falcao, 2009). At the same time, a wide variety of contextual factors
have received attention, including economic circumstances (Suri, 2004, 2009), leadership (Chhibber &
Ostermann, 2014; Shastri, 2009, 2019; Shastri & Syal 2014;); incumbency and government performance
(Chhibber, 2009), governance (Kumar & Ranjan, 2009; Shankar & Sisodia, 2009); alliances (Kailash,
2009; Sridharan, 2004), electoral-systemic features (Palshikar, 2014) and campaign (Palshikar & Suri,
2014; Yadav, 2004). At the same time, there is much overlap between the different explanations.
Social-structural explanations ignore individual changes and, consequently, miss the link between
social and individual change. As Alwin and Krosnick (1991) argue, social change and individual change
are connected; while people change because of social changes, how people change has an impact on
societal change. The neglect of age (individual change) as an influencing factor of vote choice studies of
voting behaviour in India is not surprising.
Dismissing the significance of age, Yadav and Palshikar (2009, p. 39) make two points; first, age has
not been a significant cleavage in Indian politics. Second, implicitly endorsing the ‘impressionable years
hypothesis’, they argue that the age effect, if any, in terms of the surge of support new parties receive
from younger cohorts fades away after a few elections. At the same time, they believe there is a
generational effect for the BJP since it enjoys significant support from those under 25. A couple of
questions follow. First, does the age effect dissipate? What if an enduring relationship exists between the
younger cohorts and the new parties of their time? Before we push the age variable aside, we should
examine these questions.
In age-related studies, one can identify at least four competing hypotheses (Niemi & Jennings, 1981).
The ‘life-long persistence’ hypothesis argues that the impact of early socialization continues to inform
the individual and endures throughout life. In contrast, the ‘life-long openness’ hypothesis does not see
any stability in attitudes since individuals are open to receiving new ideas throughout their life. The ‘life-
cycle’ hypothesis argues that while some attitudes endure, others are amenable to change given changes
in the stages of life.
Finally, the ‘generational model’, like the life-cycle hypothesis, takes a middle position and leans
towards the persistence model but does not argue that change will necessarily occur. Since different
generations’ formative social and political experiences vary, different cohorts potentially have different
attitudinal perspectives on issues and events. If this is the case, the replacement of older cohorts by
younger groups impacts the nature and direction of political and social change. This model overcomes
some of the limitations of the social-structural framework as it accounts for the relationship between
individual and social change.
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