1

Mark Schneider1

Searching for a Concept: An Analysis of Partisanship in India

May 1, 2008

ABSTRACT

Research on Indian political behavior tends to focus on the weakness of party

organization and electoral volatility. This paper seeks to include India in the burgeoning
literature on partisanship in new democracies. Its task is to evaluate whether or not
partisanship is a relevant concept in India by testing a range of theories of partisan
development and further exploring the implications of high ethnic salience on voter-party
linkages. I find that partisanship is well predicted by key theories of partisanship in new
democracies, which suggests that the concept is in fact viable.

A consensus in public opinion scholarship holds that partisan identity is one of the

most powerful concepts for explaining political behavior, attitudes, and learning. Work

on advanced democracies suggests that partisanship is a heuristic for navigating the

political world, a stable form of identity, and a perceptual screen in attitude formation and

learning (Shivley 1979; Converse 1962; Green et al. 2002; Bartels 2001; Zaller 1992).

Research on partisanship in new democracies suggests that partisanship encourages

electoral stability, party system institutionalization, and democratic consolidation (Dalton

and Weldon 2007; Converse 1969; Baker et al. 1981; Brader and Tucker 2001;

Mainwaring 1999; Field 1980). Given the importance of partisanship for understanding

political behavior and the burgeoning study of partisanship in new democracies, it is

surprising that India been largely ignored. Although Eldersveld (1978) and Field (1980)

found evidence from surveys conducted in the 1960s that over 60% of Indians were

partisan—including people from all classes, castes, religions, and education groups-- we

have seen almost no work on the subject in the past thirty years. Instead, the majority of

work on Indian political behavior addresses vote choice or electoral volatility, implying
1
I would like to thank Prof. Alfred Stepan and Yogendra Yadav for access to the 2004 NES Survey.
 2

that partisanship is less relevant than a study of its apparent absence. This paper seeks to

establish whether or not partisanship is relevant among voters in India in effort to begin

to fill this empirical void.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, I introduce the case of India and provide a

review of independent variables in the literature on partisanship in new democracies that

can be tested with Indian survey data. Second, I operationalize these variables using the

2004 National Election Studies (NES) survey administered by the Center for the Study of

Developing Societies (CSDS). Third, I test hypotheses from the comparative literature

with 2004 data.

Why India?

India provides a compelling case for the study of partisanship because it is the

most populous and one of the oldest (uninterrupted) democracies outside of the OECD

countries. Unlike Latin America where democracy was interrupted in most countries by

military dictatorships or the former Soviet Union where democracy is quite young, India

provides a rare example of a second wave democracy where partisanship has had nearly

60 years to develop. Second, India provides an example of a democracy where ethnic

diversity more closely approximates sub-Saharan Africa than the 25 new and established

democracies included in the first wave CSES.2 Thus, a study of partisanship in India

allows us to evaluate the purportedly primary role that ethnic identity plays in partisan

development in one of the few highly diverse countries where procedural democracy is

clearly consolidated (Kohli 2001). Third, decentralized federalism and variation in state

2
According to Alesina et al’s (2003) dataset, India has a linguistic fractionalization score of .81. Fearon’s
(2003) dataset gives sub-Saharan Africa a cultural diversity mean of .71, which is largely based on
linguistic diversity. This is significantly higher than the global average (.48) and the average for Western
countries (.24). Given that India has five dimensions of ethnicity that are politically salient, ethnic diversity
is quite a major issue in Indian politics to a degree beyond that of the OECD countries (See Chandra 2005).
 3

party systems and demographics allows for an analysis that takes account of variation in

contextual variables across states.

Why Now?

I have noted that including India in the discourse on partisanship will benefit this

literature. I also argue that this study is essential because rare earlier studies of

partisanship are based on surveys administered when democracy was young and

Congress was an unrivaled power at the state and national level. This is no longer the

case. Yadav (1999) divides Indian politics into three periods. In the first period (1951-67)

Congress held power at the state and national levels. In the second period (1967-1989),

Congress retained power at the national level with rare exception; however its vote share

declined and it lost dominance in a number of states. In the first two periods, politics was

oriented around one’s position on Congress; either you supported Congress or the

opposition. In the third period (1989-present), Congress could no longer hold a majority

in parliament and lost favor in many states. The general party system became much more

competitive, diverse, and for the first time characterized by coalition government at the

center. For example, in the 2004 general elections, the leading Congress won less than 28

percent of total seats in the Lok Sabha and held less than two-thirds of seats in their

ruling coalition, which it shared with 11 other parties. In short, party systems at the state

and national levels hardly resemble those of 1967 when Eldersveld and Bashiruddin

conducted their surveys.

Second, the scope of ethnicity and its salience in electoral politics have changed

since 1967. With the implementation of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations for

reservations for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in government posts and colleges in
 4

1990, party strategies shifted from coded ethnic mobilization to overt ethnic appeals

(Chandra 2000). Lower castes became more politicized and assertive and caste conflict

shaped the party system in ways that it had not under Congress dominance. Moreover, the

BJP-led movement to destroy a mosque purportedly built on the site of Ram’s

birthplace— an event which led to Hindu-Muslim violence in cities and towns across the

country – elevated the Hindu-Muslim cleavage from the domain of extremist parties,

predominantly in urban areas, to that of mainstream politics. Third, media access has

sharply expanded in the past four decades with major expansions of newspaper

readership in rural areas (Wilkinson 2007).

Fourth, older studies do not measure partisanship in a manner consistent with

most recent studies of comparative partisanship and do not use multiple regression

techniques. Eldersveld and Bashiruddin (1978) ask the following question: ―Generally

speaking which party do you feel closest to?‖ Field asks: ―Is there any political party in

this country that you think would do more good for the people of this country than any

other? Which party do you support‖ (Field 1980)? Eldersveld’s question assumes that

voters identify with a party and provides no negative cues with the likely effect of

exaggerating partisanship (Sanders et al. 2002).3 Field’s question focuses on a voter’s

assessments of a party’s potential to perform well, which comes closer to a prospective

evaluation (Achen 1992) than identification (Campbell et al. 1960). Although Field’s

measure is more restrictive than the former measure and may serve as a more reliable

point of comparison, it is based on surveys administered in only four states including two

Communist Party-dominated states which may be considered outliers. In sum, we can

3
They find 70% of Indians to be partisan based on 1967 data. A measure for 2004 on whether not one likes
a party that require one to name that party--which also should inflate the results—finds 51% to be partisan
(see figure 1).
 5

draw on earlier studies as a reference point and to inform hypotheses for later analyses;

however, earlier studies do not measure partisanship sufficiently.

Fifth, the conspicuous absence of scholarship on partisanship among adults since

Field (1980) and the recent wave of studies on electoral volatility suggest that

partisanship explains very little in Indian politics. Nonetheless, if we take seriously

findings on variation in volatility rates across states and understand stability in voting

patterns to reflect—although not effectively measure—stability in partisan preferences in

the aggregate, there is reason to believe that partisanship may have some relevance in

India even if it has more widespread relevance in some states and party systems and not

others.4

In sum, if we think that dominant party systems are more likely to see survey

respondents express partisanship, we should expect partisanship to have changed since

1967 now that electoral politics is more complex (Huber et al. 2005).5 If we think that

increased ethnic salience makes voters more likely to express partisanship, partisanship

should have been positively affected as well. And if we think that those with greater

access to party messages through the mass media are more likely to be partisan (Brader

and Tucker 2007), we should expect the last 40 years have made a difference. Although

time series analysis is necessary to evaluate these effects, the need for more current

knowledge of partisanship in India should be obvious.

Partisanship in India: Concept and Measurement

I define partisanship as a predisposition to support a party. Where partisanship is

fully developed, partisanship has been found to predict positive attitudes toward one’s

4
See Lupu and Stokes (2007).
5
This remains an open question (Slabad & Slomczynski 1999).
 6

party (Campbell et al. 1960), bias information processing (Bartels 2001), and predict vote

choice. Where it is less developed, Brader and Tucker (2001) argue that patterns in vote

choice provide the strongest clues for distinguishing nascent partisans from non-partisans

while self-identification is less likely to do so. After 60 years of uninterrupted democracy,

it is not clear that one should expect partisanship in India to be nascent as in the post-

Soviet world and sub-Saharan Africa. 6 At the same time, it is clear that partisanship has

not achieved the substance that it holds in older single member plurality democracies

such as Canada and Britain (Eldersveld and Bashiruddin 1978).

Since we do not know where on the continuum of partisan development India

falls-- and expect variation on this scale across states where relevant parties vary in age

and party systems vary in diversity and volatility—I use two dependent variables

expected to capture partisanship. First, following from Brader and Tucker (2001), I

include a binary behavioral consistency measure, which codes those who report voting

for the same party in the 1999 and 2004 general elections. Brader and Tucker use a

behavioral measure to capture a developing partisan predisposition where partisanship is

not sufficiently developed for us to expect an explicit statement of identification. The

Indian measure is far more restrictive than their measure due to the five-year spread

between elections; however it provides a check as to whether or not liking a party is a

strong indicator of being predisposed to vote for that party.7 For my second measure, I

6
It should be noted that India has been a democracy for 60 years, which is 15 years shy of Converse’s 2.5
generation marker for a frozen partisan electorate. Given that most parents have children earlier than age 30
in India we may even say that India has reached the 2.5 generation mark where partisanship levels are
expected to plateau.
7
Note that Brader and Tucker’s measure of core partisans includes a maximum at voting for the same party
within one year. Also, note that I do not claim that partisanship causes vote stability as the reverse causal
argument is also likely. Instead, I use these two measures as corroborating evidence of a party
predisposition.
 7

use the NES question: ―Do you like any particular party? Which one?‖8 This measure is

less restrictive and provides a weak form of the self-identification question.9 It attempts

to capture a psychological attachment to parties; however, this measure should be

interpreted with caution. First, this question may be less precise than the question used in

past surveys in India and Europe, which asks: ―Do you feel close to any particular party,

which one?‖ The latter question cues a social psychological connection between voters

and parties that the 2004 measure may not achieve.10

Finally, the partisanship measure and vote stability measure are significantly

correlated according to percentages and chi-square. When I exclude scheduled tribes,

whose political behavior differs from the general trend, those who do not like a party are

approximately equally likely to vote for the same party in two consecutive elections.11 On

the other hand, 61 percent of those coded as liking a particular party report voting for the

same party as compared to 39 percent who do not. This suggests that expressing an

affective predisposition for a party is linked to patterns in vote choice.

Figure 1

Vote
Stability Total
Party_like 0 1
0 55.60% 44.60% 11,708
1 44.40% 55.40% 11,840
Total 11,010 12,538 23,548

8
I refer to this measure as the party-like measure in the remainder of this paper.
9
Note that the question ―Do you feel close to any particular party‖ was asked in previous NES survey not
available in the U.S. This may be a superior measure to the party-like measure and I will evaluate this in
Delhi in summer 2008.
10
Despite its weaknesses, the NES measure is far from perfectly correlated with vote choice and—unlike
the vote-stability measure-- consistent with a variety of theoretical expectations in the literature on
partisanship in new democracies. This suggests it capture partisanship to a reasonable although not
maximal degree.
11
See table 1 at the end of this paper where I include dummy variables for respondents from scheduled
tribes and states with populations of 30% or more scheduled tribes.
 8

Partisanship in New Democracies: Key Issues and Hypotheses

Research on partisanship in new democracies addresses the following broad

questions. (1) Does partisanship grow more pervasive over time (Converse 1969; Lupu

and Stokes 2007; Brader and Tucker 2001; Campbell et al. 1960)? (2) How does political

sophistication influence partisanship? (3) Are those with greater access to information

more likely to be partisan (Brader and Tucker 2002, 2007; Pérez-Liñán 2002)? (4) How

do calculations about social groups drive partisanship in low information democracies

(Ferree 2004; Posner 2005; Mattes and Norris 2003). I present independent variables that

capture these arguments below.

Political Experience. The political experience hypothesis takes individual level

and aggregate forms. At the individual level, the life-cycle argument proposed by

Michigan researchers posits that as one accumulates experience voting for the same party

over the years, partisan stability will increase (Campbell et al. 1960). These findings are

confirmed by a large number of studies based on survey evidence that find partisanship

unlikely to change for older adults (Franklin and Jackson 1983; Campbell et al. 1960;

Leithner 1997; Alwin and Kroskik 1991). Leithner (1991) understands the effect of

cumulative voter participation as a process in which the more times an individual votes

for one party relative to others, the less likely he will vote for a different party with the

ultimate effect of developing partisanship. Unless vote choice is a random walk, which a

consensus of scholarship refutes, it appears that the more one votes, the more likely he

will vote consistently and the more one votes consistently the more likely he will develop

a stable party preference.

 9

The mechanism driving this trend receives several explanations. Shivley (1979)

argues that voters interested in making an intelligent vote choice but lacking in cognitive

resources will adopt partisanship as an information short-cut. If a voter wants to make a

correct vote choice and votes in ten elections, it is plausible that he will be more likely to

adopt an information shortcut than if he has only participated in one election. Second,

Achen (1992) argues that as a voter accumulates evaluations over time, his overall

assessment of a party will change at a decreasing rate. This means that the more one

votes and makes judgments about where she stands on policy relative to political parties,

the less likely one will change her vote. Since party evaluations at time period t depend

on t-i, partisanship grows out of stable positive evaluations of a political party. Applying

this logic to the adoption of partisanship over time, the more a non-partisan makes a

rational vote choice by supporting the same party, the more likely he will defer to that

party label in the future or develop a positive affective attachment to that party.

The political experience hypothesis in its aggregate form follows from Converse’s

(1969) classic socialization model, which emphasizes the importance of parental

transmission of partisanship. The argument is that as democratic regimes age, voters will

be more likely to have been socialized by their parents toward a party preference. With

respect to new democracies, the expectation would be that we should see an increasing

level of partisanship in second wave democracies—where democracy was not

interrupted-- such as India relative to third wave democracies such as Zambia and Poland.

Dalton and Weldon (2007) apply this model to a dataset on new democracies and find

strong positive results for the social learning model.

Hypothesis 1: Those who vote more frequently are more likely to be

partisans than those who vote less often.
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Hypothesis 2: Those who are older are more likely to develop partisanship.

Political Sophistication. Brader and Tucker (2002) understand political

sophistication to include political engagement, political awareness, and education. They

find that in Russia interest and awareness both drive partisanship while the relationship

between education and partisanship is negative when interest and awareness are

controlled. Political awareness and interest are expected to increase partisanship because

interested and aware respondents are more likely to be exposed to campaign messages,

engaged in the political process, and to vote consistently. Therefore, interested voters are

likely to develop partisanship either in order to reduce the information costs on their vote

decision (Shivley 1979; Dalton and Wattenberg 2000) or because they support the

positions parties take or the social bases they represent (Campbell et al. 1960; Achen

1992; Huber et al. 2005).

Bringing attention to cognitive resources, the Shivley hypothesis finds some

support in earlier studies on India. Eldersveld and Bashiruddin (1978) find that those with

more than a middle school education are the least likely to be partisans to the extent that

illiterates are more partisan than those who completed high school and college.12 Field

(1980) reports a drop in partisanship among the college educated as well. The best

educated in these studies may be non-partisan because they have greater access to

information and do not need to depend on parties for information short-cuts (Dalton and

Wattenberg 2000).

Hypothesis 3: Politically engaged voters are more likely to be partisans.

12
College educated people in India are significantly less likely to be strong partisans than illiterates in the
aggregate with 37% and 54% of strong identifiers respectively according to 1967 data.
 11

Hypothesis 4: As educational attainment increases, partisanship will

become less common.

Exposure to Information. Beyond cognitive resources, scholars of partisanship in

new democracies suggest that as exposure to information on party positions increases that

partisanship will become more likely. For example, survey and experimental data

analyzed by Brader and Tucker (2002, 2007) shows that access to basic information

about parties increased reported partisanship in Russia. Similarly, Perez-Linan (2002)

finds cross-national evidence from Latin America that those who watch television news

more often are more likely to express partisanship. Following Converse (1962), I expect

that those who consume high levels of news media possess large repositories of partisan

information compared to those who consume little or no news. Moreover, I expect that

those with larger repositories of partisan information will be more likely to support a

particular party as new information will be less likely to change their party preference.

Therefore, the expectation from this literature is that low news consumption will translate

to lower level of partisanship and vote stability.

Hypothesis 5: Those who consume news media across mediums will be

more partisan than those who do not have access to news media.

Effective Number of Parties. Huber et al. (2005) argue that the more

diverse the party system the more difficult it will be for voters to develop

partisanship. This is so because as party systems grow increasingly complex,

voters must work harder to learn about their party differential. Following this

logic, the Congress dominant party system in India prior to 1989 should see

higher levels of partisanship than the current diverse party system and states with
 12

highly competitive party systems should have lower levels of partisanship than

states with two or fewer effective parties.

Hypothesis 6: Respondents from more competitive party systems are less

likely to express partisanship than those from less competitive party
systems.

Party System Volatility. Lupu and Stokes (2007) show that partisanship

develops over time in new democracies when democracy is stable. Similarly,

Huber et al. (2005) show that respondents (with less than a college education) are

more likely to be partisan where parties have been around for a long time. In India

there is significant variation on party age particularly where regional and ethnic

parties have become most successful. I expect that voters in states where the party

system is highly stable will be more partisan than those in less stable states.

Hypothesis 7: As the mean party age of a state party system increases,

partisanship will be more likely.

Social Groups. Campbell et al. (1960) hypothesize that the linkage between social

groups and parties will be greatest when groups are salient to politics and parties provide

visible cues of group-party linkages through policies or the social profiles of candidates.

Research on voting in ethnically diverse democracies—where ethnic divisions are

generally considered most politically salient-- suggests that social identity is the

predominant independent variable on vote choice (Birnir 2007; Chandra 2004; Posner

2005; Yadav 2000; Chhibber 1999; Ferree 2004a, 2004b; Norris and Mattes 2003).

Cross-national time series analysis by Birnir (2007) shows that ethnic diversity reduces

electoral volatility in new democracies and Heath (1999) finds that Indian states where

party social bases are more clearly identified by social cleavages saw significantly lower

levels of electoral volatility and higher levels of partisanship.

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Studies of the mechanisms of ethnic voting provide clues as to how ethnicity

might drive partisanship. Ferree (2004) tests three types of micro-foundations leading to

voting along racial lines in South Africa. First, ethnic voting can be an expressive act of

ethnic group allegiance motivated by self-esteem benefits. In this case, policy

considerations do not inform vote choice and identity salience would be most important.

Second, ethnic voting can be conflated with policy interests that are homogenous within

groups. This mechanism means that party policy positions are both known and salient,

which does not apply to the median voter in India (Yadav 1999; Chandra 2004). Third,

ethnic identity may operate as an information short-cut for voters in information poor

environments concerning expected policy or patronage outcomes. Ferree finds evidence

supporting the information short-cut hypothesis alone (See Chandra 2004 and Birnir 2007

for further evidence of this mechanism).

Research confirming the information short-cut hypothesis suggests that co-ethnics

are likely to support a party along ethnic lines out of strategic reasons, which means that

affective identification with an ethnic group is not necessary. Consistently, using cross-

national Afro-barometer survey data, Miguel and Posner (2006) find that only a minority

identify along ethnic lines rather than along other dimensions although ethnic identity is

highly predictive of vote choice.13 Moreover, Ishiyama and Fox (2006) found the

relationship between ethnic identification and partisanship to be negative and significant

13
Miguel and Posner asked respondents the following question:
 14

in the aggregate and positive and significant only in the ethnic party system of Malawi--

upon disaggregation by country.

The information short-cut hypothesis implies that where cues signaling the

relationship between parties and social groups are particularly strong, voters from these

groups are more likely to be partisans. A state measure that captures the clarity of group-

party linkages would therefore address the degree to which voters can distinguish parties

by their ethnic composition. For example, if there are four groups {A,B,C,D} in State {S}

and voters understand that parties W,X,Y, and Z are overwhelmingly identified with

groups A,B,C, and D respectively, the party system is ethnically polarized and party-

group linkages are clear to voters (Horowitz 1985). This scenario is the maximal and

simplest form of clarity in group-party linkages. If there are two parties and Party X is

identified with groups A and B and Party Y is identified with groups C and D, group-

party linkages are also quite clear because members of group A realize that they are

represented by party X as do members of group B. Members of group C also realize that

party X is identified with A and B but not C and that X is identified with C. The objective

of building a variable that measures the clarity of group-party linkages then should

measure the degree to which voters’ understandings of party social bases approximate the

above examples.

If voters are more likely to be partisans of parties that clearly represent

their social group, the next question asks how they base their understanding of

party social bases. On approach would be to simply ask them which groups go

with which parties in a survey although this has not been done. A more feasible

alternative would attempt to map parties to groups based on the mechanisms that
 15

voters use to asses group-party linkages. Chandra (2004) argues that voters in

India make this assessment by counting the heads of co-ethnics in prominent party

positions. If it is the case that in environments of low information such as India

that party promises are non-credible (Keefer 2006), it should also be the case that

campaign appeals are not credible. Thus, the only reputable information about

group-party linkages comes from observations about the people parties promote

or nominate to top positions. If a scheduled caste voter for example observes that

a disproportionate amount of BSP members of the state assembly (MLAs) are SCs

to a degree beyond all other parties, he then makes the inference that the BSP

represents the scheduled castes. Similarly, if a Muslim in Uttar Pradesh observes

that very few Muslims are in positions of power in the Hindu Nationalist BJP, she

makes the inference that the BJP does not represent Muslims. I detail this measure

and a compromise measure given the current unavailability of Jaffrelot’s data in

the subsequent section.

Hypothesis 8: Respondents in states where the ethnic make-up of party

leadership differs across parties are more likely to be partisans than those
where party leaders have similar ethnic backgrounds.

To recap, the eight hypotheses drawn from literature on partisanship

follow:

Hypothesis 1: Those who vote more frequently are more likely to be

partisans than those who vote less often.
Hypothesis 2: Those who are older are more likely to develop partisanship.
Hypothesis 3: Politically engaged voters are more likely to be partisans.
Hypothesis 4: As educational attainment increases, partisanship will
become less common.
Hypothesis 5: Those who consume news media across mediums will be
more partisan than those who do not have access to news media.
Hypothesis 6: Respondents from more competitive party systems are less
likely to express partisanship than those from less competitive party
systems.
 16

Hypothesis 7: As the mean party age of a state party system increases,

partisanship will be more likely.
Hypothesis 8: Respondents in states where the ethnic make-up of party
leadership differs across parties are more likely to be partisans than those
where party leaders have similar ethnic backgrounds.

Data and Measurement of Independent Variables

To test the preceding hypotheses, I present evidence from the 2004 National

Election Survey administered by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS)

in New Delhi. This survey includes over 27 thousand observation collected from 28 states

and three union territories. Respondents were drawn through multi-staged stratified

random sampling with respondents drawn from 420 parliamentary consistencies, 932

state assembly constituencies, and 2,380 polling stations. The survey was run in a single

wave that spanned the 48 hours from the time of voting in the 2004 general elections to

the time of vote counting. This marks the largest survey of Indian political behavior to

date with sample sizes above 450 for all states with the exception of Goa. In my analysis,

I include all states with the exception of Jammu and Kashmir, which I exclude due to

potentially confounding factors associated with the three-way conflict between Pakistan,

India, and the Kashmiri Independence Movement. While this state may be included in a

future iteration, it is not clear that partisanship reflects the same process of socialization

in Kasmir as it does in other states. I also drop two union territories with sample sizes

below 50. When accounting for these restrictions and missing data, my analysis include

21, 674 observations. Below I introduce measurement of independent variables linked to

theories of the acquisition of partisanship.

Political Experience. Political experience includes two variables: age and voting

experience. The age variable is a continuous variable measured in years and includes
 17

adults from the ages of 18 to 95.14 If age reflects the degree to which one was socialized

into democracy, the maximum age should include those who were eligible in the

maximum number of elections. I measure voting experience as an interval/ratio variable

that ranges from 0 to 2.15 Those who report that they did not vote in the 1999 or 2004

general elections are coded . Those who voted in either but not both of these elections are

coded 1 and those who voted I both elections are coded 2. I also test for the interaction

term between age and voting experience. Here, we should expect that older people who

votes consistently will be more partisan. If we can infer that older people who voted in

both elections are also likely to have voted consistently in earlier elections, this captures

the political experience mechanism fairly well.

Political Sophistication. Political sophistication is measured in terms of political

interest and education. I measure education as an ordinal variable on a (0,6) scale with

illiterates coded zero and college graduates coded 5. Political engagement is measured

based on responses to the following questions: How interested were you in the election

campaign this year—a great deal, somewhat or not at all? I break this variable into

dummy variables with not at all interested as a baseline.

Exposure to Political Information. I create three ordinal variables on a (1:4) scale

for media news consumption through television, radio, and newspapers. I code 1 for those

who do not consume a particular type of media. I code 2 for those who report consuming

news once in a while for a given type of media and code 3 for those who report

14
I cut off the years above 95 because I suspect coding error for ages 96-99.
15
Note that it is possible that respondents did not vote in parliamentary elections but did turn out for state
elections, which are particularly important in India. As state assembly election voter turnout was not coded
in the NES survey I am restricted to general election turnout.
 18

consuming news media often and code 4 for daily consumption.16 I include separate

variables for each form of media because they are likely to have different effects and

requirements. For example, newspaper and television news is primarily consumed by

those with at least a high school education.17 Radio is consumed by a wider range of

respondents.

Party System Fractionalization. I measure party system fractionalization in

legislative seats at the state level following the formula for the effective number of

1
legislative parties (Taagepera and Shugart 1989; See also Chhibber and Nurruddin
 pi 2
2005). I include all parties with at least one percent of seats in this calculation and

calculate from state elections prior to 2004. I only use elections immediately prior to

2004 because party diversity should figure into respondents’ attitudes in 2004. Since

elections for state assembly that year occur concurrently with parliamentary elections this

is required to understand how respondents’ experience with party systems may impact

whether or not they develop partisanship.

Party Age. I code party age for an individual party as the number of years from

the first state assembly election a party contested in a states subtracted from the NES

survey year 2004. This number is weighted by vote share—calculated from state

assembly elections in 2004 or immediately prior to 2004-- and summed for up to six top

parties across states.18 For example, in Uttar Pradesh the Congress Party-- formally

founded in 1885-- and the Communist Party (CPI) founded in 1925 both

16
Note that the newspaper question does not mention news consumption explicitly while radio and
television questions do. I consider these parallel since newspapers constitute news by definition.
17
Note that unlike in OECD countries, televisions are primarily owned by those from the middle classes
and above and are rare in the countryside.
18
I restrict parties included in this measure as those who earned at least 1% of the vote.
 19

contested in the first state assembly elections in that state in 1951. Therefore I calculate

their party age as 2004 (the year of the NES survey)—1951=53. Finally party age is

weighted by vote share and summed to calculate mean party age for the state party

system as a whole. This last step is also followed by Huber et al (2005) and allows for a

mean party age that captures the parties that most influence the ENPS measure laid out

above.

Social Groups. I argue above that voters in state party systems where group-party

linkages are salient and visible are more likely to be able to discern what party represents

them and eventually develop a psychological attachment to that party than those in states

with less visible cues. If we accept for the moment the consensus among scholars of

Indian voting behavior that caste and religious identities are highly salient in varying

ways across Indian states, the central task is to develop a measure of the visibility of

party-group linkages for state party systems as a whole. I develop two measures in this

section. The counting heads measure cannot be implemented until data on the ethnic

coding of legislators collected by Christophe Jaffrelot becomes available in December

2008. The caste diversity measure captures the diversity of major caste groups across

states.

Counting Heads Indicator. The counting heads indicator captures the mechanism

in which voters assess group-party linkages from enumerating the proportion of co-

ethnics in prominent positions in parties. Information about the ethnic identity of party

leaders is the least costly type of information to obtain where ethnic markers are known

and media and politicians alike advertise these identities. When data on this measure

becomes available my coding procedure will go as follows. I code party personnel

 20

according to six broad caste and religious categories included in the 2004 NES

questionnaire: Other (predominantly upper caste), OBC, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled

Tribe, Muslim, and other religious minorities.19 I code the ethnic identities of state

legislators elected in the election prior to 2004 across Indian states. I use ethnic make-up

prior to the 2004 elections because voters are likely to use information about group-party

linkages available to them prior to the election in formulating their answer to the party

identification question. I use state assembly make-up rather than some other measure of

party leadership such as cabinet composition because I expect that voters are more likely

to know the relative share of co-ethnics from elected positions than appointed ones. This

information is likely to be advertised in election campaigns and it is not clear that a large

share of voters pay attention to national or state administrations-- although this remains

an empirical question not addressed by existing surveys.

When Jaffrelot’s data becomes available in December 2008, I will code this

measure as follows.20 First, I calculate percentages of state legislators from each of the

six NES ethnic categories for each party with at least one percent of state assembly seats

across states.21 Second, I compare percentages to ascertain whether not there are major

differences--20% or more-- across parties. For example, if 50% of the BSP came from

scheduled castes while 10% of MPs from all other parties in the state came from

scheduled castes, it is clear that the BSP represents scheduled castes. If, 40% of MPs

from the BSP are Muslim compared to 50% from SP and 5% from the BJP, no one party

19
The above variables rely on data on the ethnic categories of MLAs collected by Christophe Jaffrelot for
the years 1951-2004 (to be released in December 2008). He codes for the same categories included in the
NES questionnaire.
20
Note that it was expected that these data would become available much sooner. The book in which these
data are used will be released in December 2008 by Rutledge India Press.
21
The six groups include Other Backward Castes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST),
Other castes primarily composed of forward castes, Muslims, and other religions.
 21

stands out to represent Muslims. Finally, I create an additive variable for the number of

groups predominantly represented by particular parties. States where the percentage of a

party’s seats held by a particular group is 20% more than for all other parties are coded 1

if this is true for one group only. They are coded two if two groups are concentrated in

particular parties, and so on.

State Caste Diversity. In lieu of data needed for the above measure, I have

developed a measure for the effective number of caste groups and scheduled tribes that

uses the same formula as the effective number of parties outlined above. I choose the

dimension of caste because it is widely understood to be the central dimension of

cleavage in Indian politics.22 My caste diversity measure includes data from two sources

due to limitations of the census. I use data on the percentages of STs and SCs from the

census; however, the census does not collect data on OBCs or forward castes. To

calculate these proportions I use the percentages of respondents from OBCs and Other

Castes (Forward Castes) from the 2004 NES survey. These numbers are quite close to

household surveys that measure OBCs and Other Castes for most but not all of the states

I include in my analysis. While the need to draw demographic data from multiple sources

is not ideal, it provides a rough measure of caste diversity across states.

I argue that this measure provides a rough picture of the counting heads

hypothesis. Following Posner (2005), evidence suggests that the ethnic groups that are

largest in a politically important arena of competition are most likely to be politicized.

For example, in North Indian cities with large concentrations of Muslims, parties actively

mobilize these groups and run candidates from these groups. Similarly, there has been a

22
Note that data compiled by Steven Wilkinson on linguistic diversity did not have a significant effect on
partisanship.
 22

trend particularly since 1991 to mobilize scheduled castes and OBCs. For example, the

BSP in Uttar Pradesh and RJD in Bihar have mobilized large segments of the scheduled

castes while the Samajwadi Party has a plurality of OBC support in Uttar Pradesh.

If we accept that where the effective number of groups is large—but not

extremely large—that parties will attempt to mobilize these groups, it is also reasonable

to suggest that where there are more effective groups that group-party linkages will be

more visible to voters. This means that although parties may be multi-ethnic in many

cases, when groups are numerically significant, parties have the incentive to mobilize

voters along ethnic lines (Posner 2005). Thus, where group-party linkages are most

obvious, I expect partisanship will be more likely to develop.23 I also interact caste

diversity on the effective number of parties measure as ethnic diversity may only impact

partisanship insofar as caste groups correspond to parties.

Controls. I include controls for gender, scheduled tribes (STs), and tribal states

where the population includes at least 30% of scheduled tribes. Men are widely known to

be more politically active than women in India and voter turnout is also significantly

lower for women (Chhibber 2008). Second, scheduled tribes are clearly the least partisan

caste group in India and independent variables such as interest that move in the positive

direction for the overall model move in the negative direction for scheduled tribes. This is

likely due to the fact that STs remain poorly integrated into mainstream society in India.

Finally, I create a control for states with population composed of at least 30 percent of

STs. The idea here is that state-level factors such as the effective number of castes or the

effective number of parties will be differently impacted in tribal states. Concerning caste

23
Note that the same analysis may be done on the politically salient dimensions of religion and language.
This data is available off the shelf only for the most populous states in India. I will create these measures
for all states in a future iteration.
 23

diversity this is clearly true as STs are considered to be one group. This means that states

with the largest number of STs—which may include many different tribes—are coded as

the most homogenous. Concerning the effective number of parties and other state-level

factors it may be the case that states dominated by STs are different for reasons not

included in the model. For example, many tribal states have undergone some degree of

tribal insurgency in the past and this may explain anticipated variation.

Data Analysis from the 2004 National Election Survey

Results from the NES 2004 survey data strongly suggest that partisanship is a

relevant concept in India. Independent variables drawn from all major hypotheses

positively and significantly predict partisanship. In this section I provide details of my

results.

I begin this analysis by looking at the effects of the variables outlined above on

the development of partisanship in India. Partisanship and vote stability measures are

regressed on all 16 variables, which include two interaction terms. As both of my

dependent variables are dichotomous, results were generated by maximum likelihood

estimation using a logit model. Coefficients and standard errors are presented in table 2 at

the end of this paper. I decompose interaction effects and main effects among the

components of interaction effects in tables 3 through 6. I present a crosstab of the

proportion partisans and voters who supported the same party in 1999 and 2004 in table 1.

Partisanship and Volatility. These data make it clear that partisanship and vote

stability measure relatively distinct concepts. Beginning with raw state figures on both

dependent variables displayed in table 1, we can see that the two dependent variables

often do not move together. For example, Karnataka has the lowest level of partisanship
 24

outside of the tribal states with below 40 percent expressing a preference; however, the

percentage of voters who support the same party falls above the mean at 55 percent.

Moreover, although the partisanship measure is less restrictive than the vote stability

measure, there is not a clear pattern in these numbers. Ten states have more partisans than

stable voters and 19 have more stable voters than partisans. This suggests that there is not

a monotonic relationship between vote experience and partisanship.

Second, results from the logit model show that independent variables linked to

partisanship have different effects on vote stability. For example, both measures of

interest in politics have positive and significant effects on partisanship; however, the only

interest variable with (weakly) significant effect on vote stability takes a negative sign.

Similarly, radio news consumption has a highly significant and positive effect on

partisanship and an equally significant negative effect on vote stability. Finally, while

males are very significantly more likely to express partisanship than women, there is no

significant difference across genders when it comes to party loyalty at the polls.24

The marginal effects of voter turnout interacted with age also show different

trends across dependent variables. The effect of voter turnout on the probability that an

individual is a partisan across age cohorts pales in comparison to that for vote stability.

An increase of one unit (voting in one election) on the voter turnout measure leads to an

increase in the probability of party loyalty in vote choice many times the size of

partisanship across all age cohorts. Large differences also exist in interpretation of the

interaction term between effective number of parties and effective number of caste

groups where the effects are much larger for vote stability than partisanship. Finally, it is

24
Note that this may be explained by women’s reluctance to offer political opinions in Indian surveys and
the possibility that women vote the preference of the head of the household during elections. This is an
empirical question outside the purview of this paper.
 25

interesting to note that while men are highly significantly more partisan than women

(99.9% significance level), there is no significant difference between men and women

concerning vote stability. Approximately 53% of both groups voted for the same party in

1999 and 2004. While analysis of voting behavior falls outside the purview of this paper,

it is clear that while partisanship predicts vote choice in India, they are not similar

concepts of varying strength. For this reason the remainder of this analysis emphasizes

findings on the partisanship measure with some discussion of how both measures

compare.

These data also show that partisanship is well predicted by major hypotheses in

the literature on partisanship. All variables not included in interaction terms and all

interaction terms are significant in predicting partisanship.25 This suggests that

partisanship works in a similar way in India as it does in other new and older democracies.

That I find such consistency in terms of significance suggests that the party-like measure

captures partisanship to a reasonable degree although it will not be clear whether or not

or how much it is inflated relative to other measures until comparative survey analysis

can be completed.

Political Experience. Hypotheses on the effect of political experience on the

acquisition of partisanship posit that as voters get socialized into democracy over time,

partisanship becomes more likely (Brader and Tucker 2002;Converse 1969; Lupu &

Stokes 2007). I test this hypothesis by analyzing the effect of age on the probability that

one is a partisan across levels of voter turnout (table 2) and subsequently the marginal

effect of voter turnout on partisanship across age cohorts (table 3). These data show that

25
I established that interaction terms are significant with likelihood ratio test. In all cases chi squared
values were significant at the 95% confidence level or above.
 26

age has a modest negative and significant effect on partisanship when voter turnout is 0.26

The minimal effect of age on partisanship is not surprising although it suggests that those

who simply lived in democratic India for a large number of years—even if they did not

vote—are not more likely to be partisans.

The more interesting finding concerns the marginal effect of voter turnout on

partisanship across age groups. When we move from a 27 year-old to a 60 year-old

(cumulative probabilities of 25% to 90% on the age variable respectively) the percent of

marginal increase in the probability of partisanship rises from 13.8 percent to 29.8

percent respectively. A similar but much larger trend exists for vote stability. The

probability that a 60 year-old voted for the same party twice is nearly two times as large

as that for a 27 year old. From these data we see that voter turnout and its interaction with

age has a powerful impact on the development of affective ties to parties. If one votes

often she is more likely to be partisan and if one votes often and is older—meaning they

are likely to have voted often for extended period of time-- the probability of partisanship

is particularly high. This supports the political experience hypothesis.

Political Sophistication and Media Consumption. Education has a negative and

significant (90% level) effect on partisanship. The relationship is twice as large and

significant (99% confidence level) for the vote stability regression. These findings are

consistent with Shivley’s information shortcut hypothesis and consistent with findings on

partisanship in new democracies. This hypothesis posits that when individuals have the

capacity to process information without the aid of information shortcuts from party labels

they will not become partisans. In the Indian case, it is plausible that the better educated

26
Note that when the range on the age variable is reduced from 18-95 to 18-75, this size of the coefficient
becomes several times smaller and loses significance in the logit output although the negative sign remains.
When age is restricted to >65 it changes signs although this is not particularly meaningful
 27

not only have the capacity to make their own electoral decisions but are also disaffected

with party politics. Future research should distinguish between whether or not the most

educated are less partisan because they are disillusioned with party politics that often

ignores policy and emphasizes patronage distribution that they do not need and ethnic

appeals which may be less effective for this demographic.

Both interest measures have positive and highly significant effects on partisanship.

Those who report a great deal of interest in the election were over twice as likely to be

partisans as those said they were somewhat interested. Brader and Tucker (2002) suggest

that those who are engaged in politics are most likely to be partisan regardless of

education because they are motivated to vote effectively. Those who are interested and

less educated-- following the Shivley hypothesis-- should be more partisan than those

interested and highly educated because information shortcuts will be more necessary for

these individuals. Thus, the hypothesis linking political engagement to partisanship is

confirmed in the 2004 data.

Expectations about the effect of news consumption on partisanship are also

confirmed in the data. Newspaper readership is significant at the highest level across both

dependent variables and has the largest coefficient. Radio news consumption has

significant effects in opposite directions across the dependent variables. Television news

holds the weakest effect, which is only significant on the partisanship measure. These

findings confirm expectations by Brader and Tucker (2002) that exposure to campaign

propaganda through the mass media increases the probability that one has a party

preference. It should be noted here that exposure to party messages through the media is

quite distinct from the effect of education. Education makes respondents more critical of
 28

electoral politics while the mass media-- with the exception of the English language

press—are not particularly critical.

Party Age. Consistent with the Converse hypothesis on political experience, I

expect that respondents in states where party systems are highly stable are more likely to

identify with parties. Respondents in states where the same party has contested elections

for many decades had had a longer time to develop partisan ties relative to respondents in

more volatile party systems. Moreover, in states where effective parties entered the party

system very recently it may be more difficult for respondents’ partisan preferences to

stabilize. In such contexts we may expect a particularly low level of party loyalty at the

polls and low levels of affective ties to parties as well. The 2004 data confirm this

expectation with very high significance and a fairly small effect.

Effective Number of Parties and Effective Number of Caste Groups. Following

from literature on ethnic voting and the social psychological literature on partisanship, I

hypothesized that where group-party linkages are most obvious to voters that partisanship

should be more common than where these linkages are less obvious. The compromise

measure I proposed looks at whether the effective number of caste groups at the state

level translates to higher levels of partisanship. Clearly, at issue concerning the degree to

which castes map to parties is the effective number of parties. I present data on the

interaction between caste diversity and the effective number of parties in tables 5 and 6.

These data show that the probability of partisanship increases with both ethnic diversity

and the number of parties in a state. It is also clear that ethnic diversity has a much larger

effect across party systems than the effective number of parties has across caste
 29

demographies. I find that the effect of caste diversity is at least twice as large as ENPS on

the partisanship variable. This finding supports the group-party linkages hypothesis.

This finding requires a caveat to be addressed in a subsequent iteration. The head

counting mechanism of partisanship outlined earlier in this paper is not clearly confirmed

with the compromise measure of caste diversity. The expectation with this finding is that

parties are more likely to mobilize along ethnic lines where groups along a politically

salient cleavage dimension are more numerous. Nonetheless, this measure does not

capture the degree of ethnic homogeneity of party leadership. Although the caste

diversity effect grows as the number of viable parties increases-- which suggests that

states with more ethnically polarized party systems have more partisans—it does not

provide information on the degree to which parties are ethnically homogenous. For

example, in Uttar Pradesh three of four parties court Muslims, three of four parties court

Brahmins, and at least two parties court the scheduled castes.27 This means that states

with high caste diversity are likely to have a variation on the degree to which parties map

to caste groups when caste diversity is held constant. It is not possible to know the degree

to which voters develop partisan tendencies following the counting heads hypothesis until

data on the ethnic makeup of party leadership compiled by Jaffrelot becomes available

later in 2008.

Moreover, the caste diversity measure does not provide information needed to

evaluate causal mechanisms through which counting the heads of co-ethnics among party

leaders translates into partisanship. If voters base their party preferences on expectations

about future distribution of benefits, we should see that parties identified with particular

27
The Congress Party, BSP, and SP court Muslims. The Congress Party, BSP, and BJP all court Brahmins.
The BSP and Congress court scheduled castes (See Chandra 2001 for a broader discussion).
 30

groups maintain disproportionate levels of patronage distribution for the groups they

represent. Recent research on ethnic patronage suggests that this pattern is not inevitable

in clientelistic democracies (Kasara 2007). Further research is also needed to evaluate the

psychic (self esteem) benefits mechanism of partisanship driven by ethnic identity

(Chandra 2004).28

Conclusion

This paper presents two primary contributions. First, it provides strong evidence

to support the relevance of partisanship in India and adds that country to the dialogue on

partisanship in new democracies. This evidence is rooted in the finding that major

predictors of partisanship in Russia (Brader and Tucker 2002), Latin America (Lupu and

Stokes (2007), and western democracies (Green et al. 2002; Huber et al. 2005)

consistently predict partisanship in India. The second contribution concerns linking

scholarship on ethnic voting in ethnically diverse democracies of the developing world to

scholarship on partisanship (Chandra 2004; Birnir 2007; Green et al. 2002). Preliminary

evidence also suggests that caste mobilization translates to partisanship. A new measure

on the ethnic composition of parties across state legislatures formulated but not included

in this paper will provide a more explicit test of Chandra’s ethnic head counting

hypothesis as it relates to partisanship.

28
This topic will be addressed in a research project recently initiated with Simon Chauchards.
 31

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Table 1: Partisanship and Vote Stability Across States

State Proportion Like a Party Proportion Voted for Same Party N

Andhra Pradesh 0.631372549 0.559215686 1,275

Arunachal Pradesh 0.380228137 0.182509506 263
Assam 0.35257732 0.530584192 1,455
Bihar 0.547080979 0.502824859 1,062
Goa 0.501449275 0.553623188 345
Gujarat 0.469540769 0.625117151 1,067
Haryana 0.518817204 0.545698925 744
Himachal pradesh 0.545454545 0.619414484 649
Karnataka 0.389323843 0.545907473 1,405
Kerala 0.601601602 0.657657658 999
Madhya pradesh 0.57064722 0.586144029 1,097
Maharashtra 0.461936438 0.498152254 1,353
Manipur 0.347222222 0.344907407 432
Meghalaya 0.516971279 0.279373368 383
Mizoram 0.461368653 0.110375276 453
Nagaland 0.350912779 0.290060852 493
Orissa 0.59352518 0.634292566 834
Punjab 0.431818182 0.512784091 704
Rajasthan 0.598235766 0.6319166 1,247
Sikkim 0.590200445 0.465478842 449
Tamil Nadu 0.597484277 0.350943396 795
Tripura 0.672932331 0.682330827 532
Uttar Pradesh 0.566793893 0.518447837 1,572
West Bengal 0.560414269 0.675489068 869
Delhi 0.532258065 0.621975806 992
Jharkhand 0.328106152 0.418576598 829
Chhattisgarh 0.317164179 0.56840796 804
Uttaranchal 0.497757848 0.589686099 446
MEAN 0.480455014 0.486272276 812
N=23,548
 35

Table 2
Vote
Party-Like Stability
Political Experience
Age -0.009* -0.016***
0.003 (.003)
Voter Turnout 0.021 0.633***
(0.066) (.073)
Age*Voter Turnout 0.004** 0.013***
0.002 (.002)
Political Sophistication

Education -.016* -.038***

0.009 (.009)
Somewhat Interested 0.51*** -.059*
0.032 (.033)
Highly Interested 1.31*** 0.076
0.056 (.052)
Media News Exposure

Newspapers 0.112*** 0.051***

(.016) (.016)
Radio 0.057*** -0.046***
(.014) (.014)
Television 0.047*** 0.022
(.014) (.015)

State-Level Variables

Effective Number of Parties -0.087** -0.143**

(.056) (.058)
Mean Party Age 0.006*** 0.007***
(.001) (.001)
Effective Number of Castes -0.023 0.146***
(.057) (.059)
Caste*ENP .055** 0.049**
(.02) (.021)
Controls

Male 0.174*** -.018

(.03) (.031)
Scheduled Tribes -0.155*** -0.424***
(.05) (.047)
Tribal States -0.239*** -.253***
(.05) (.051)
Constant -0.873*** -1.52***
(.206) (.22)
Number of Observations 21,475
Note: Entries are coefficients (and standard errors) from logit regression. ***p<.01, **p<.05, *p<.10
 36

Table 3 Marginal Effect of Age

Marginal Effect
Turnout Marginal Effect Party-like Vote_stability)
0 -.009 -.016
(.2%) (1.6%)
1 -.006 -.003
(.6%) (.3%)
2 -.003 .01
(.3%) (1%)

Table 4 Marginal Effect of Voter Turnout

Age Marginal Effect Party-like Marginal Effect Vote_stability)

22 0.109 0.919
(11.5%) (150.6%)
27 0.129 0.984
(13.8%) (167.5%)
35 .161 1.088
(17.5%) (196.8%)
48 .213 1.257
(23.7%) (251.5%)
60 .261 1.413
(29.8%) (310.8%)

Table 5 Marginal Effect of ENG

ENPS Marginal Effect Party-like Marginal Effect Vote_stability)

1.707 0.070885 0.229643
7.30% 25.80%
2.115 0.093325 0.249635
9.78% 28.40%
2.491 0.114005 0.268059
12.10% 30.70%
3.81 0.18655 0.33269
20.50% 39.50%
4.301 0.213555 0.356749
23.80% 42.90%
 37

Table 6 Marginal Effect of ENPS

EFG Marginal Effect Party-like Marginal Effect Vote_stability)

1.789 0.011395 -0.055339
1.50% -5.40%
2.587 0.055285 -0.016237
5.70% -1.60%
2.903 0.072665 -0.000753
7.50% -0.10%
3.123 0.084765 0.010027
8.90% 1%
3.49 0.10495 0.02801
11.10% 2.80%