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Uttar Pradesh Elections 2017
This article examines the electoral alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress in the recently held Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in the context of India’s complex polity at the national and state levels.
What can we expect about electoral coalitions in India, particularly state-level electoral coalitions, from theory and comparative experience?1 India does not neatly fit into theories of coalition politics developed on the basis of the European experience of parliamentary democracy in mostly unitary states with less ethnic heterogeneity than India, and using proportional representation or mixed-member electoral systems.
First, India’s polity at the national or state level is not characterised principally by a single left–right ideological axis but multiple cross-cutting axes, including the left–right axis—for example, secular versus Hindutva, and a variety of caste and community bloc-based axes, varying statewise.
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