New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xix, 288 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-11868-3.
Since independence in 1947, a diverse range of regional parties have competed for power in India, shaping its electoral politics, centre-state relations, and patterns of conflict, democratization, and nation-building. Indeed, as this excellent book highlights, few polities in the world compare. During the 1950s and 1960s, India’s regional parties together won between 20 and 30 percent of the national vote. During the era of national coalition government between 1989 and 2014, their share reached 45 percent. Yet in general, regional parties are a significant, if understudied, phenomenon in many polities around the world.
Why Regional Parties has two key objectives. First, what explains their prominence in the world’s largest democracy? According to Ziegfeld, by the early twenty-first century, regional parties exceeded 40 percent of the vote in only seven other democracies in the world (including Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands in Asia and the Pacific). Crucially, he defines regional parties as those “whose electoral support is geographically concentrated in a small part of a country” (2). Thus, his definition transcends “regionalist” parties championing the ethno-cultural identity or material interests of a region, a subset that dominates current scholarship. Second, how can we explain party system formation in clientelistic democracies, where politicians seek “electoral support through discretionary and individualized allocation of goods, services, and state capacity” (3)?
Ziegfeld largely pursues these questions through a classic quantitative research design, rigorously testing his formal theoretical deductions against a vast range of empirical data, constantly searching for their observable implications. He contends that in such democracies, including India, political elites, not voters, determine whether, when, and why regional parties emerge. The book advances a three-step argument over nine linked chapters. First, clientelism and “permissive institutional rules” favour the emergence of regional parties. The former makes it costly to build national party organizations. The electoral laws, structure of government, and division of powers that comprise the latter enable regionally concentrated parties to win parliamentary representation. Second, national coalition governments favour the rise and persistence of regional parties. Finally, regions dominated by opportunistic political factions are more likely to build cross-regional alliances that enable national parties. Ideological factions face greater obstacles and thus are more likely to become regional formations.
Why Regional Parties makes several notable contributions. First, Ziegfeld provides the most systematic explanation of the rise of regional parties in modern Indian democracy to date. Second, and equally impressive, he develops an original theoretical argument to anticipate where, when, and why we should expect to see regional parties rise in other polities. Finally, the author has created and shared an original dataset of the performance of regional parties in 111 countries (http://www.adamziegfeld.com/datasupplementary-material.html). This is a valuable resource for students of Indian politics as well as comparativists interested in clientelism, regional parties, and electoral systems generally.
In making such a bold argument, of course, the book likely will generate debate. First, the definition and measurement of several key variables warrant scrutiny. The delineation of clientelism sometimes appears tautological: “In a clientelistic democracy, regional parties are electorally successful when elites capable of winning votes through clientelism opt to form regional parties” (76). Moreover, although many scholars characterize Indian democracy as clientelistic, the evidence presented suggests a complicated picture. For example, respondents to the 2009 National Election Survey (NES) of the Lokniti network, a series that Ziegfeld uses throughout the book, attest that politicians offered discretionary benefits in various domains. Except for expectations of pork, however, a plurality did not report such behaviour regarding constituency service, vote buying or monitoring votes—a figure that becomes a majority if we include those who answered “don’t know” (84). Perhaps most importantly, the sharp conceptual distinction between clientelistic politics and programmatic politics is useful for pursuing the logical implications of each, but risks overstating the matter. There is growing evidence that programmatic services influence voting decisions in India, as Ziegfeld acknowledges. For example, the 2009 NES revealed that voters supported the incumbent Congress Party in that general election for expanding various social entitlements. More generally, if ideological factions find it hard to build cross-regional alliances, it suggests a programmatic dimension to Indian politics. Ultimately, if clientelism is a vote-winning strategy that works for all parties and especially for incumbents (65), even when few voters receive any benefits (54), what explains the very high levels of anti-incumbency in India since 1989? Politicians forming new regional parties, although clearly important, may not fully explain this phenomenon.
Second, the book contends that the advent of national coalition governments in 1989 explains why the vote share of regional parties increased significantly thereafter, not vice versa. Such governments clearly generated powerful incentives. Yet the claim that “regional parties played no part” (181) in ending single-party governments in New Delhi is debatable. The vote share for regional parties declined in 1984 and 1989, and only increased after 1996. Yet their share reached comparable heights in 1971 and 1984, suggesting a longer-term trend (table 7.1, 174). Moreover, the decline between 1984 and 1989 may partly reflect the temporary consolidation of various regional parties into the Janata Dal, coded as a “national” party in 1989, but whose factions were designated as “regional” in 1984 and 1991. In general, the book disputes that regionalization can explain either the rise of regional parties or the decline of single-party majorities in New Delhi. As Ziegfeld notes, 50 to 70 percent of respondents in successive rounds of the NES claimed primary attachment to their regions vis-à-vis India between 1996 and 2009, suggesting the lack of growing regional identification. Similarly, successive World Values Surveys demonstrated a comparable level of constant high pride in being Indian (table 7.2, 196). Yet as these findings intimate, and as studies of other NES questions reveal, a plurality of respondents in India often identify equally with their regions and the nation. Using survey instruments that imply a strict dichotomy may obscure hybrid political identities. Ultimately it is hard to fully explain the post-1989 coalition era without taking into account the regionalization of the federal party system, a process that began with the reorganization of states along distinct linguistic-cultural lines in the 1950s and 1960s, encouraging the emergence of various regional parties and distinct party systems in the states in the 1970s and 1980s and national coalition governments after 1989.
Finally, the book persuasively contends that clientelism and certain institutional rules are more likely to engender regional parties. Yet its comparative examples suggest the former may be less important than the latter. A telling case, briefly analyzed, is Brazil (245–246). Although its politicians use clientelistic strategies to win support among a highly unequal citizenry, Brazil has few regional parties, because its electoral laws reward parties that can achieve a threshold of votes across the country. Similarly, regional parties enjoy only 4 percent of the national vote in Japan, despite its strong clientelistic foundations (28, 69). In general, the vote share of regional parties exceeds 10 percent in only a fifth of the 111 polities studied. Ultimately, institutional rules may prove more significant.
Sanjay Ruparelia
New School for Social Research, New York, USA