Regional Parties

Abstract India’s regional political parties have long constituted an important component of the country’s party system. This chapter begins by defining regional parties based on their one shared characteristic: geographic concentration of electoral support. The chapter then describes India’s regional parties in two ways. The first examines how strikingly heterogeneous this group of parties is on virtually all dimensions other than the geography of their electoral support, including message and origin. The second charts their role in politics over time, from their initial prominence in a growing number of states (1951–89) to their substantial clout in national politics (1991–2009), and more recently their diminished role at the Centre but growing prominence in opposing the BJP (2014-present). Next, the chapter turns to scholarly treatments of regional parties, identifying three crucial empirical puzzles associated with India’s regional parties: their relative success in cross-national comparison, their rise in the 1990s, and their variation in success across India. Whereas scholars have made considerable progress explaining the rise of regional parties, these other puzzles have received less attention as has the question of regional parties’ impact on politics. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how future research might usefully proceed to better understand regional parties in India.