Party Decline in a Mature System: The Congress Party of India

Abstract

The Congress Party of India retained its electoral dominance for almost four decades from the first national elections held in independent India in 1952 until 1989 (with a brief interlude from 1977 to early 1980). Since then, the party's vote share and the number of seats it has in the lower house of the Indian parliament-the Lok Sabha-has declined substantially. This essay attributes the changing fortunes of the Congress Party to the inability of the party to continue to aggregate the interests of voters and candidates across the Indian states. In the period of dominance, the Congress Party was able to aggregate the ”state-based parties,” which formed its support base, into a national party. As the role of the national government changed and as state governments became increasingly more important to the interests of candidates and voters, the ability of any national party to continue to aggregate the interests of its voters and candidates nationally became problematic and the Congress Party was unable to maintain its electoral dominance.