Why Ethnic Parties Succeed : Patronage And Ethnic Head Counts In India

Drawing on a study of variation in theperformance of ethnic parties in India, this book builds a theory of ethnicparty performance in ‘patronage democracies’. The author shows why individualvoters in such democracies choose between parties conducting ethnic head countsrather than by comparing policy platforms or ideological positions. She arguesthat an ethic party is likely to succeed when it has competitive rules forintraparty advancement and when the size of the group it seeks to mobilizeexceeds the threshold of winning or leverage imposed by the electoral system.