James Chiriyankandath - Parties and Political Change in South Asia

Over the past seven decades and more, political parties have become an essential feature of the political landscape of the South Asian subcontinent, serving both as a conduit and product of the tumultuous change the region has experienced. Yet they have not been the focus of sustained scholarly attention. This collection focuses on different aspects of how major parties have been agents of and subject to change in three South Asian states (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), examining some of the apparent paradoxes of politics in the subcontinent and covering issues such as gender, religion, patronage, clientelism, political recruitment and democratic regression. Recurring themes are the importance of personalities (and the corresponding neglect of institutionalisation) and the lack of pluralism in intraparty affairs, factors that render parties and political systems vulnerable to degeneration.

This book was published as a special issue of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics.

James Chiriyankandath is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and Co-Editor of the journal Commonwealth & Comparative Politics. Having previously worked at the universities of Hull, London Guildhall and London Metropolitan, he has taught, researched and published on the politics of South Asia (especially India) for over two decades.

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The chapters in this book were originally published in Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Chapter 1

Parties and political change in South Asia

James Chiriyankandath

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 16

Chapter 2

Losing the connection: party-voter linkages in Pakistan

Shandana Khan Mohmand

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 731

Chapter 3

Elite formation within a political party: the case of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

C. Manikandan and Andrew Wyatt

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 3254

Chapter 4

Class, nation and religion: changing nature of Akali Dal politics in Punjab, India

Pritam Singh

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 5577

Chapter 5

Incumbency, internal processes and renomination in Indian parties

A. Farooqui and E. Sridharan

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 78108

Chapter 6

Women candidates and party nomination trends in India evidence from the 2009 general election

Carole Spary

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 109138

Chapter 7

Parties, political decay, and democratic regression in Sri Lanka

Neil DeVotta

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 139165

Chapter 8

Elite patronage over party democracy high politics in Sri Lanka following independence

H. Kumarasingham

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, volume 52, issue 1 (February 2014) pp. 166186

Please direct any queries you may have about the citations to clsuk.permissions@cengage.com

James Chiriyankandath

Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, London, UK

Over the past seven decades and more political parties have become an essential feature of the political landscape of the South Asian subcontinent, serving both as a conduit and product of the tumultuous change the region has experienced. Yet they have not been the focus of sustained scholarly attention. This collection focuses on different aspects of how major parties have been agents of and subject to change in three South Asian states (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), examining some of the apparent paradoxes of politics in the subcontinent. Recurring themes are the importance of charismatic leaders and their families (and the corresponding neglect of institutionalisation) and the lack of pluralism in intraparty affairs, factors that render parties and political systems vulnerable to degeneration.

In the seven decades since South Asia emerged from two centuries of British colonial rule the subcontinent has witnessed considerable and often tumultuous, political change military coups and popular uprisings, terrorism, rebellions, secessionist movements, civil wars, and the internal reorganisation or breakup of states. During this time political parties across the region have served both as a conduit and a product of these changes. Indian parties attracted significant attention from, especially American, political scientists in the 1960s and 1970s (Baxter, 1969; Erdman, 1967; Kochanek, 1968; Sisson, 1972; Weiner, 1967). In subsequent years the character and role of political parties in South Asia, did not receive the same degree of scholarly interest except for the rise of parties based on religious, ethnic or caste identity (Chandra, 2004; Graham, 1990; Katzenstein, 1979; Malik & Singh, 1994; Nasr, 1994; Subramanian, 1999). As coalition and minority governments became the norm at the national level in India after 1989 (Chiriyankandath, 1997), the changing party system also became more a focus of study (Chhibber, 1999; Mehra, 2013; Wyatt, 2010). In the last decade there has been a revival of interest in parties as for the first time there are governments elected on the basis of, at least nominally, competitive multiparty political systems in all the seven states of the subcontinent (DeSouza & Sridharan, 2006; Enskat, Mitra, & Spiess, 2004; Hasan, 2002; Suri, Hllhag, Kadirgamar-Rajasingham, Tjernstrm, & Gomez, 2007). Much still remains to be done in exploring the place of parties in South Asia apart from Nasrs (1994) work on the Jamaat-i Islami in Pakistan no substantial study of any subcontinental party outside India has yet appeared.