Why do some ethnic parties succeed in attracting the support of their target ethnic group while others fail? In a world in which ethnic parties flourish in both established and emerging democracies alike, understanding the conditions under which such parties rise and fall is of critical importance to both political scientists and policy makers. Drawing on a study of variation in the performance of ethnic parties in India, this book builds a theory of ethnic party performance in 'patronage democracies'. Chandra shows why individual voters and political entrepreneurs in such democracies condition their strategies not on party ideologies or policy platforms, but on a headcount of co-ethnics and others across party personnel and among the electorate.

1.The Constitution and Reservation Policy2.Identification of Backward Classes and Constitutional Provisions3.Public Opinion on Reservation Policy4.Protective Discrimination Policy: Programmesand Issues5. Success and Failure in Implementation of Protective Discrimination6. Reservation Policy: Benefits Accruing 7. Reservation Policy and Anti-Reservation Stirs 8. The Role of Scheduled Caste Elites 9. EduC: ltion of Children of SCs and Consti- tutional Benefits10. Reservation and its Consequences 11. Jurisprudential Foundation 12. Parliamentary Debate 13. Distribution of Scheduled Castes Population by Sex State/DistrictInde

Study, with reference to Orissa, India.

From Hierarchy to Ethnicity discusses the origins of politicized caste identities in twentieth-century India, and how they evolved over time.