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Political Participation, Institutionalization and Stability in India*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Paul R. Brass
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TWENTY YEARS OF BREAKDOWNS IN PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENTS; the replacement of competitive political systems by military-bureaucratic regimes throughout Asia and Africa; civil war in Vietnam; the disintegration of Nigeria and the perpetration of genocide in that country, have inspired pessimism among most observers about the future of democratic politics in the new states. It has been suggested that political scientists now turn their attentions to the question of ‘political decay’ as well as to the question of ‘political development’ and that political leaders in the new states concentrate upon building the instruments of political control before engaging in serious economic development and social mobilization, and before permitting political competition and political participation: for, it is argued, rapid increases in economic development, social mobilization, and political participation work against the building and maintenance of strong and stable political institutions in a developing society.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1969 , pp. 23 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1969

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References

1 See, especially, Huntington, Samuel P., ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, World Politics, XVII, 04, 1965, pp. 386–450 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nettl, J. P. and von Vorys, Karl, “The Politics of Development”, Commentary, XLVI, No. 1, 07 1968, pp. 52–9Google Scholar.

2 Citation from ‘Preliminary Reports on Election Results From Some Pradesh Congress Committees’, a mimeographed document provided by the courtesy of the All India Congress Committee, New Delhi.

3 Statesman, 29 August, 1966.

4 Weiner, Myron (ed.), State Politics in India, pp. 194–5.Google Scholar

5 Times of India, 9 November 1966.

6 See, for example, the reports in the Statesman, 3 and 24 January and 9 February 1967.

7 See Table 5 for the index of institutionalization, which is discussed more fully below.

8 Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, p. 427.

9 Key, V. O., Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 3rd ed., New York, 1952, P. 351.Google Scholar

10 On the concept of selective mobilization, see Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, p. 428.

11 Weiner, State Politics in India, p. 41. Clearly this is not the only index which might be used. For another index which might be adapted to Indian party and electoral politics, see Douglas Rae’s formula for measuring fractionalization in party systems in The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, New Haven, 1967, ch. iii. This formula was brought to my attention too late to be used in this paper. It should be noted therefore that the only measure of institutionalization used here is the one shown in Table 5.

12 On the DMK and the non-Brahman movement, see Rudolph, Lloyd I., ‘Urban Life and Populist Radicalism: Dravidian Politics in Madras’, Journal of Asian Studies, XX, No. 3, 05, 1961, pp. 283–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hardgrave, Robert L., ‘The DMK and the Politics of Tamil Nationalism’, Pacific Affairs, XXXVII, No. 4, Winter 1964–65, pp. 396–411 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Dravidian Movement, Bombay, 1965; Eugene Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South lndia: The Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism, Berkeley, University of California Press, forthcoming.

13 Hardgrave, The Dravidian Movement, p. 32.

14 Ibid., p. 35.

15 Ibid., p. 53.

16 This common ground, of course, is for Hindu society and does not appeal to the Muslim minority in the state.

17 Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, p. 405.

18 See especially Weiner, Myron, ‘Political Participation and Political Development’, in Weiner, Myron (ed.), Modernization: The Dynamics of Growth, Voice of America Forum Lectures, 1966 Google Scholar

19 Nettl and von Vorys, ‘The Politics of Development’, p. 56.