Contributed articles with reference to India; some previously published.

The general elections held in 2014 in India — the largest democracy in the world — to elect the 16th Lok Sabha brought in dramatic results. This important volume explains not only the startling victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but also the equally surprising downfall of the Congress Party. It examines not why BJP won and the Congress lost, but why the scale of BJP’s victory and that of Congress’s defeat was so very different from the results in the years 2004 and 2009. The volume presents an in-depth analysis of the electoral results, state-wise studies, the factors leading up to these outcomes, and the road India has travelled since then. With contributions from India’s leading political scientists, psephologists, sociologists and political commentators, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, democracy and political parties, as well as South Asian studies.

This empirically rich volume presents a holistic picture of the electoral process in Indian states and the return of the BJP to power. Drawing on the 2019 elections, it presents ground-level data to understand various aspects of elections: the nature of campaigning, caste, class and identity politics, electoral issues, poll strategies of different parties in the fray, electoral issues, electoral verdicts, the contestants, the leadership factor, the formation of government, among other empirical details. The essays underline the determinants of electoral behaviour by looking into the correlation between the background variables of voters and their voting choices. The essays also compare and contrast the 2019 election verdicts from the earlier elections held in the state under study. A long view of Indian state politics, this book will be essential reference for scholars and researchers of politics, especially political processes, and South Asian studies.

Ever since the Congress system finally collapsed and the post-Congress polity emerged in 1989, state has arisen as the most crucial terrain at which electoral outcomes are shaped. This book presents analyses of electoral politics in 24 states of India during the period 2008-2013. This period is of great interest because in the post-2004 period, Congress started adapting itself to the compulsions of the post-Congress polity and survive as one of the competitors in electoral politics. In a sense, the period under study here is the period of a stable post-Congress polity. Apart from the parliamentary election of 2009 that brought the Congress-led UPA back to power with an increased strength of the Congress party, this period also witnessed assembly elections in each of the states discussed here. The chapters look both at the Parliamentary election of 2009 and the Assembly election from each state to investigate how the two impact each other and what broader patterns emerge from their interaction. While the all-India picture of competitive politics presented the picture of routineness of electoral competition, many states threw up characteristics of a much more fluid competitive politics. This volume brings out this complex pattern of electoral politics at the state level and seeks to contribute to our understanding of state level political processes by using the rich data set of post-election surveys done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi over the years.

One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

Empirical results from India suggest that politicians exert greater effort in managing public works during election years. Surprisingly, there is no evidence of a populist spending spree to sway voters just before elections.

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.