Election pledges in India: comparisons with Western democracies

Abstract

Election pledges feature prominently in the theory and practice of representation and have been examined extensively in a growing field of comparative research. However, research in this field has largely ignored non-Western democracies and the world’s largest electoral democracy, India. The present analysis begins to fill this lacuna by examining election pledges made by Indian parties at the national level over a period of two decades (1999-2019) and comparing this with selected Western parties. The extension of research on election pledges to India prompts us to assess the relevance of pledges to the distinctive characteristics of Indian party competition. This differs markedly from the spatial model of party competition that is often applied in pledge research in Western systems. Party competition in India is instead characterised largely by valence politics on socioeconomic issues and by identity politics on religious issues. The quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate the distinct features of pledges in policy areas characterised by valence and identity politics. We discuss the implications of the findings for understanding party competition in India and for the broader research programme on election pledges.