Federal Coalitions in India: Strategic Calculations and Revolving-door Partners

Article
Federal Coalitions in India:
Studies in Indian Politics
4(1) 63–76
Strategic Calculations and
© 2016 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Revolving-door Partners
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2321023016634940
http://inp.sagepub.com
K.K. Kailash1
Balveer Arora2
Abstract
The lack of stability of political affiliations has been a recurrent theme in studies on political parties
in India. Initially, this concern was voiced in terms of the defections of legislators from the party on
whose ticket they were elected. With the advent of federal coalitions, shifting affiliations took on a new
dimension, with parties themselves moving between different coalition fronts. This has often been seen
as some form of idiosyncratic and undesirable behaviour and linked to the spectre of an ungovernable
India by alarmists in search of supposedly more stable arrangements. We explain this party mobility by
highlighting the federal dimension and its impact on party competition.
Keywords
Coalition politics, coalition switching, India, multi-level system, political parties, party system, federalism
This article seeks to advance our understanding of party competition in multi-level systems; in particular,
of the strategic choices that state-based parties make when it comes to timing their entry and exit from
federal coalitions. Parties in federal coalitions often have varied territorial interests and the weights they
give to different levels of governments tend to vary. Furthermore, when different levels of government
follow separate electoral calendars, the time horizons of parties in the coalition can and often do diverge.
We understand revolving-door behaviour by coalition partners to mean that they not only disagree with
the coalition policies but that they also shift positions and even withdraw from coalitions before their
terms end. Party choices can be understood only if we account for the organizational logic of parties as
well as the impact of differential electoral calendars.
It makes two contributions. One, there is now a substantial body of literature on parties and coalition
formation, but exits from coalitions have received relatively less attention. Furthermore, coalitions were
studied as ‘single-shot’ games. While focusing on exits, we examine coalitions in a more dynamic setting
as they negotiate their way through their tenure in parliament. We believe that party–coalition linkages
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India.
2 S.K. Dey Chair Professor and Chairman Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Corresponding author:
K.K. Kailash, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500046, India.
E-mail: kkkss@uohyd.ernet.in

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Studies in Indian Politics 4(1)
are not fixed but are eminently changeable as parties continually evaluate relationships and weigh stra-
tegic advantages and trade-offs between outside support as part of the ruling coalition (sans fruits of
office), participation in the governing coalition (with attendant benefits and risks) and leaving the
coalition altogether. Analyzing exits and examining the coalition in action moves beyond traditional
static approaches and should, we believe, enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of coalition
politics. It brings to the forefront linkages between coalition maintenance, legislative governance and
party competition in-between elections in a multi-level polity.
Two, traditional coalition studies offer no conceptual framework to make sense of the revolving-door
behaviour. We situate Indian coalition experiences within the comparative literature and also draw
from party–legislative studies to see if the Indian experience throws useful insights into the dynamics
of coalition politics. A more systematic study of joining, then leaving before rejoining (either pre- or
post-election), while appearing on the surface to be a cynical exercise in making the best of both worlds,
should reveal a deeper logic embedded in electoral calculations. This study should weaken the popular
interpretation of shifting loyalties as exemplars of political opportunism ostensibly damaging the
so-called democratic order of things and offers a new theoretical framework to make sense of coalition
politics in multi-level settings.
The argument developed in this article unfolds in four parts. First, we operationalize the phenomenon
of revolving-door coalition shifts and examine the current state of theorization on coalition building and
maintenance to assess the extent to which federal imperatives have been factored into the debate. Second,
we identify the underlying structural factors on the one hand and those related to the political conjuncture
on the other, to explain revolving-door shifts in federal coalitions. Third, we examine the patterns of
shifts thrown up by data of the period 1996–2014 in the light of our discussion on revolving-door shifts.
Finally, we conclude with an attempt to correlate the incidence of volatility with the nature of the state
party system to discern regional variations and patterns in volatility.
Revolving-door Coalition Shifts
Our focus is limited to federal coalitions in government between 1996 and 2014. Coalition here includes
not only executive coalitions, that is, where parties participate in cabinet but also legislative coalitions
where parties offer outside support to single-party or multi-party minority governments. We use revolv-
ing door as a wide term to indicate any change in the position of a coalition partner party vis-à-vis
the ruling federal coalition. Every shift has three dimensions and it is the combination of dimensions
which distinguish shifts one from the other. The first is the consequence dimension, which essentially
revolves on the impact the partner’s shift has on the coalition’s position in the legislature. On the basis
of consequences, we can distinguish between intra-coalition and parliamentary-consequential shifts.
Intra-coalition shifts leave intact the numbers of the coalition in the legislature, but this is not the case
for parliamentary-consequential shifts.
The second dimension is the direction, which obviously refers to the direction of the movement.
Those shifts towards the coalition are called inward shifts, whereas those moving away from the coali-
tion are outward shifts. Finally, there is the location dimension, which helps us identify the positional
changes. On the basis of the three dimensions, consequence, direction and location we posit six types of
coalition shifts in Table 1.
Intra-coalition shifts, as the name suggests, include simple positional shifts within the coalition
from the executive to legislative coalition and vice versa. The switches that parties make here are
not majorly consequential and do not impact the coalition’s position vis-à-vis the opposition. However,

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Kailash and Arora 65
Table 1. Typology of Revolving-door Coalition Shifts
Dimension
Coalition Shifts
Consequence
Intra-coalition Shift
Parliament-consequential Shift
Direction
Inward
Outward
Inward
Outward
Location
Legislative
Executive
Opposition
Opposition
Executive
Legislative
Executive
Legislative
Executive
Legislative
Opposition
Opposition
Source: Authors’ own.
for the parties making the shift, it might be important as it allows them to express their position vis-à-vis
the coalition. We could make a further distinction between an inward and outward shift. An inward shift
is a coming together or closing of ranks, whereas an outward shift is a moving apart. On one hand, an
outward, but voluntary, shift from the executive to legislative by a party could indicate a distancing
of positions and may be intended to send a message to the coalition maker. On the other hand, a move
from being part of the legislative to the executive coalition could indicate closer ties and/or a reward by
the coalition maker. At the same time, if the coalition maker were to push a party from the executive
to the legislative coalition it could be a sign of punishment.
When parties move out or into a federal coalition, we call them parliament-consequential shifts since
they reorder the legislative landscape. These moves change the calculations of parties both within and
outside the coalition and therefore potentially are more consequential. A positional shift or an intra-
coalition shift from an executive to a legislative coalition is in many ways only a symbolic move rather
than a definitive signal of changed positions. However, an inward shift from the opposition to the execu-
tive or legislative coalition indicates a coming together and adds to the coalition’s strength. On the other
hand, an outward shift from the executive or legislative coalition to the opposition leads to a depletion of
the coalition’s numbers.
This study draws from two related strands of literature including party—legislative studies and
coalition studies, to understand the phenomenon of coalition shifts. There is substantial literature on
individual or groups of legislators shifting positions, but there has been relatively less attention on coali-
tion switching by parties. Nevertheless, the literature on shifts by legislators does offer useful insights
about switching in a coalitional situation. First, it is clear that the incidence of...