Parties and the people: India's changing party system and the resilience of democracy

Abstract The survival of Indian democracy in spite of the contrary experience of the majority of post‐colonial states continues to be a puzzle for the comparative study of democratization. The Indian example questions two conventional assumptions of democratic theory. First, that democratic success requires medium to high levels of socio‐economic development. Second, that Asian societies can only be understood in terms of collective communities, whether they be family, tribe, caste or ethnically derived, in contrast to the individualistic character of western liberal democracies. Recognizing the inadequacy of ad hoc cultural explanations of India's relatively successful process of democratization and the resilience of her democracy, this study offers an explanation grounded in an examination of the flexibility of the party system to adapt to new challenges, by changing from the initial one‐dominant party system to the multi‐party democracy of today. Public opinion data presented here shows that India's democratic institutions enjoy a strong degree of legitimacy with large parts of the population, particularly the minority communities. However, there are some ‘grey areas’ as well. Low trust in the leading political actors and a strong feeling of political efficacy — in the absence of a corresponding sense of legitimacy in some regional and social pockets of the country — could provide the breeding space for the ‘rebels’ familiar to students of civic culture.