More Can Be Less: Hyper Plurality of Candidates, the Rationality of Electoral Choice, and Need for Electoral Reform in India

Bhattacharya, Kaushik; Mitra, Subrata Κ.

doi:10.1080/14736489.2014.873677

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The significance of anti-defection legislation on party numbers but not ENP is strongly supportive of the hypothesis that this law was successful in increasing electoral consistency and candidate accountability by reducing party defections but at the cost of proliferating the number of smaller parties. Finally, unlike the results found for political candidates by both Bhattacharya and Mitra (2014) and Kapoor and Magesan (2018), the more than tenfold increase in the candidate deposit fee in 1996 does not appear to have had any significant long run effect in decreasing either the number of parties or ENP.…”

Section: The Number Of Parties Versus Effective Number Of Partiescontrasting

confidence: 89%

“…As Kapoor and Magesan (2018, p. 678) write, "[b]y 1996, the deposit had eroded to almost nothing in real terms, and from a pecuniary standpoint, candidate entry was effectively free". The low cost of candidate entry led to a massive proliferation of candidates (Bhattacharya and Mitra, 2014), encouraging 'frivolous' candidacy for reasons such as parties running dummy candidates to steal votes from opponents (Kapoor and Magesan (2018, p. 691)) and the promotion of name recognition within a district.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

Ferris

Dash²

2021

Preprint

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What accounts for the large and ever-changing number of political parties that contest Indian state elections? In this paper we test an equilibrium model of political parties where the number of parties depend on the average size of state constituencies, the heterogeneity of the state’s electorate, state per capita income as well as constitutional and legislative rules that directly affect party numbers. Extending the analysis to consider the effects on entry and exits highlights those factors that have affected party turnover instead of or in addition to changing aggregate party numbers. Comparison of the effects on numbers with those on the effective number of parties (ENP) suggests that the model explains variations in the number of smaller sized parties that are a more transitory part of the electoral process. Whether this implies that the model is more applicable to the lesser developed Indian states is examined by re-testing the model against a subdivision of states that differ by their stage of development. While most variables work in the same way, increases in the proportion of reserved seats have decreased both party numbers and ENP in lower income states, with the opposite occurring in higher income states. The effect of state partition has been to decrease party vote fragmentation more than party numbers.

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Section: The Number Of Parties Versus Effective Number Of Partiescontrasting

confidence: 89%

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

Ferris

Dash²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…These elections were expensive for the Commission to administer, as the book of candidate information must be printed and made available to any citizen who requests it. While the Commission had been considering responses to candidate proliferation across the country for several years (Bhattacharya and Mitra 2014), one specific event precipitated the Commission’s decision. In the 1996 Tamil Nadu State Assembly elections, a single seat was contested by 1,033 candidates.…”

Section: Context and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dummy candidates are a concern because their presence may correlate with the deposit as well as the turnout and voting decisions of voters. However, as noted by Bhattacharya and Mitra (2014), running dummy candidates is only feasible for the larger parties, who in principle are unaffected by the deposit. By this token, we expect the reform to have no effect on the number of dummy candidates.…”

Section: Robustnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 3 The deposit increases were a cost-cutting response to the massive proliferation of candidates (Bhattacharya and Mitra 2014). Elections with large numbers of candidates (more than 1,000 candidates in one case) are expensive to administer, as the Commission must print a book with the details of each candidate, and make it available free of charge to all citizens.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Independent Candidates and Political Representation in India

Kapoor

Magesan

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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We estimate the causal effect of independent candidates on voter turnout and election outcomes in India. To do this, we exploit exogenous changes in the entry deposit candidates pay for their participation in the political process, changes that disproportionately excluded candidates with no affiliation to established political parties. A one standard deviation increase in the number of independent candidates increases voter turnout by more than 6 percentage points, as some voters choose to vote rather than stay home. The vote share of independent candidates increases by more than 10 percentage points, as some existing voters switch who they vote for. Thus, independents allow winning candidates to win with less vote share, decrease the probability of electing a candidate from the governing coalition by about 31 percentage points, and ultimately increase the probability of electing an ethnic-party candidate. Altogether, the results imply that the price of participation by independents is constituency representation in government.

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On the structure of the political party system in Indian states, 1957–2018

Ferris

Dash

2022

Const Polit Econ

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What accounts for the large and ever-changing number of political parties that contest Indian state elections? In this paper we examine this question by testing an equilibrium model of political party numbers where the number of parties depend on the average size of state constituencies, voter turnout, the heterogeneity of the state's electorate, constitutional and legislative rules that directly affect party numbers and per capita state incomes while controlling for a series of discrete political events that have influenced political parties. The analysis compares this model with one explaining the effective number of parties (ENP) and extends the analysis to consider the effect of political factors such as the openness and competitiveness of the upcoming election on the timing of the decision of political parties to enter and exit (and thus the rate of political party turnover). The analysis is further extended by allowing the level of development to interact with their party structures.

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More Can Be Less: Hyper Plurality of Candidates, the Rationality of Electoral Choice, and Need for Electoral Reform in India

Cited by 4 publications

References 24 publications

On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

On the Structure of the Political Party System in Indian States, 1957 - 2018

Independent Candidates and Political Representation in India

On the structure of the political party system in Indian states, 1957–2018

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