Why Ethnic Parties Succeed

Download or read book Why Ethnic Parties Succeed written by Kanchan Chandra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some ethnic parties succeed in attracting the support of their target ethnic group while others fail? In a world in which ethnic parties flourish in both established and emerging democracies alike, understanding the conditions under which such parties rise and fall is of critical importance to both political scientists and policy makers. Drawing on a study of variation in the performance of ethnic parties in India, this book builds a theory of ethnic party performance in 'patronage democracies'. Chandra shows why individual voters and political entrepreneurs in such democracies condition their strategies not on party ideologies or policy platforms, but on a headcount of co-ethnics and others across party personnel and among the electorate.