India is a well-known exception to Duverger’s Law, which states that single-member plurality electoral systems typically lead to a two-party dominance, due to strong regional parties. We hypothesize that this India-level phenomenon is overly dominated by electoral data from densely populated regions like the Indo-Gangetic plains. Drawing on anthropological and historical scholarship, we postulate that mountain societies behave differently. To test our hypothesis, we perform a quantitative analysis on electoral data comparing India’s Himalayan states to those in the Gangetic and Brahmaputra plains. The results indicate that the plains are diverging while the mountain states are converging towards Duverger’s two-party equilibrium. This suggests that India’s mountain and plains states have a structural dissimilarity in their political culture, which supports the anthropological and historical literature from which we started. We hope to add both to the literature on electoral studies and to mountain societies and regional studies.
AcharyaA. (2022). Boundaries and borderlands: A century after the 1914 Simla Convention. Routledge.
2.
AlamA. (2007). Becoming India: Western Himalayas under British rule. Foundation Books.
3.
AliN. (2019). Delusional states. Cambridge University Press.
4.
ArnoldD. (1982). Rebellious hillmen: The Gudem-Rampa Risings 1839–1924. In GuhaR. (Ed.), Subaltern studies I: Writings on South Asian history and society (pp. 88–142). Oxford University Press.
5.
BolD., & VerthéT. (2019). Strategic voting versus sincere voting. InOxford research encyclopedia of politics. Oxford University Press.
6.
CandlandC. (1997). Congress decline and party pluralism in India. Journal of International Affairs, 51(1), 19–35.
7.
CederlöfG. (2002). Narratives of rights: Codifying people and land in early nineteenth century Nilgiris. Environment and History, 8(3), 319–362.
8.
ChhibberP., & KollmanK. (1998). Party aggregation and the number of parties in India and the United States. American Political Science Review, 92(2), 329–342.
9.
ChhibberP., & MuraliG. (2006). Duvergerian dynamics in the Indian states: Federalism and the number of parties in the state assembly elections. Party Politics, 12(1), 5–34.
10.
ChoiJ. (2009). Strategic voting in India: Its extent and determinants in the 2004 general election. Asian Survey, 49(4), 609–624.
11.
CloughE. (2007). Strategic voting under conditions of uncertainty: A re-evaluation of Duverger’s law. British Journal of Political Science, 37(2), 313–332.
12.
CulbertG. (2015). Realizing ‘strategic’ voting in presidential primaries. Rationality and Society, 27(2), 224–256.
13.
DiwakarR. (2007). Duverger’s law and the size of the Indian party system. Party Politics, 13(5), 539–561.
14.
DiwakarR. (2010). Party aggregation in India: A state level analysis. Party Politics, 16(4), 477–496.
15.
DuvergerM. (1954). Political parties. Methuen.
16.
FarooquiA., & SridharanE. (2016). Can umbrella parties survive? The decline of the Indian National Congress. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 54(3), 331–361.
17.
GuptaR. (2013). Allegiance and alienation: Border dynamics in Kargil. In GellnerD. N. (Ed.), Borderland lives in northern South Asia (pp. 47–71). Duke University Press.
18.
Guyot-RéchardB. (2017). Shadow states: India, China and the Himalayas, 1910–1962. Cambridge University Press.
19.
HeathO., & ZiegfeldA. (2022). Why so little strategic voting in India?American Political Science Review, 116(4), 1523–1529.
20.
HussainS. (2015). Remoteness and modernity: Transformation and continuity in Northern Pakistan. Yale University Press.
21.
IrvineW. P. (1989). Review of the bookSeats and votes: The effects and determinants of electoral systems, by R. Taagepera & M. S. Shugart. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 22(4), 875–876. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423900011484
22.
JaffrelotC., & VerniersG. (2020). The BJP’s 2019 election campaign: Not business as usual. Contemporary South Asia, 28(2), 155–177.
23.
KothariR. (1967). India: The congress system on trial. Asian Survey, 7(2), 83–96.
24.
LaaksoM., & TaageperaR. (1979). ‘Effective’ number of parties: A measure with application to West Europe. Comparative Political Studies, 12(1), 3–27.
25.
LijphartA. (1994). Electoral systems and party systems: A study of twenty-seven democracies, 1945–1990. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198273479.001.0001
26.
MathurN. (2013). Naturalising the Himalaya-as-border in Uttarakhand. In GellnerD. N. (Ed.), Borderland lives in northern South Asia: Non-state perspectives (pp. 72–93). Duke University Press.
27.
MayerP. (2013). Gross violations of Duverger’s law in India. Studies in Indian Politics, 1(2), 159–171.
28.
MichaudJ. (2017). What’s (written) history for? On James C. Scott’s Zomia, especially chapter 61/2. Anthropology Today, 33(1), 6–10.
29.
MishraD. K. (2013). Developing the border: The state and the political economy of development in Arunachal Pradesh. In GillnerD. N. (Ed.), Borderland lives in northern South Asia (pp. 141–162). Duke University Press
30.
MurtonG. (2013). Himalayan highways: STS, the spatial fix, and socio-cultural shifts in the land of Zomia. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 12(5–6), 609–621.
31.
NooraniA. G. (2010). India–China boundary problem 1846–1947: History and diplomacy. Oxford University Press.
32.
ScottJ. C. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.
33.
ShneidermanS. (2010). Are the central Himalayas in Zomia? Some scholarly and political considerations across time and space. Journal of Global History, 5(2), 289–312.
34.
SridharanE. (1997). Duverger’s law, its reformulations and the evolution of the Indian party system. Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector, University of Maryland.
35.
SundarN. (2001). Debating Dussehra and reinterpreting rebellion in Bastar district, central India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7(1), 19–35.
36.
SundarN. (2005). ‘Custom’ and ‘democracy’ in Jharkhand. Economic & Political Weekly, 40(41), 4430–4434.
37.
Van SchendelW. (2005). Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in southeast Asia. In KratoskaP., RabenR. & NordholtH. (Eds.), Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of knowledge and politics of space (pp. 275–307). Brill.
38.
ZiegfeldA. (2021). What accounts for Duverger’s law? The behavioral mechanisms underpinning two-party convergence in India. Electoral Studies, 73, 102382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102382
