Incumbency,internal processes and renomination in Indian parties |
| |
Authors: | A. Farooqui E. Sridharan |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, Indiaadnan.farooqui@gmail.com;3. University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India, New Delhi, India |
| |
Abstract: | This paper analyses a critical aspect of the internal functioning of five major Indian political parties, namely the nomination of candidates for parliamentary elections, focusing on the pattern of renomination of former candidates and incumbents. The data are analysed against the literature on the structure and functioning of Indian parties, and interview material on the process of nomination in the 2009 and 2004 elections. From the perspective of a six-fold typology of centralisation of nomination processes drawn from the comparative literature, it is found that all the parties analysed are in either the second-most centralised, or even most centralised categories, and that for the three major national parties, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist Party of India (Marxist), past performance plays a role in nominations, the majority of incumbents being renominated in the post-1989 period. |
| |
Keywords: | nomination renomination candidate incumbent election party committee |
|
|